[Elecraft] Kit Shipping Schedule Theory

[Alan Bloom]

On Tue, 2012-05-01 at 18:43 -0400, Don Wilhelm wrote:
> If you do not understand that a typical product release and ramp 
> up to production levels is fraught with trials and unexpected 
> situations, then yes, you might think that Elecraft has failed on 
> "promises".  Reality is that those were not "promises", but were 
> "targets" - and due to the openness that is typical of Elecraft were 
> revealed early on, but became not feasible as time marched on.

I worked in product development for many years at Hewlett Packard (and
it's successor Agilent Technologies).  HP/Agilent has a reputation for
managing the product development process very well, but even there it
was rare for a new product to actually ship on the originally scheduled
date.  Even though they always added some padding to the schedule to
allow for unforeseen events, it never seemed to be enough.  As Mr.
Rumsfeld would put it, you can plan for the expected unexpected events,
but not for the unexpected unexpected events.

Alan N1AL