Quality during Design
by Dianna Deeney
Latest episode
Customer Discovery Across Product Stages, with Ashley Phillips
Customer Discovery Across Product Stages, with Ashley Phillips
About this podcast
Quality during Design is the podcast for engineers and product developers navigating the messy front end of product development. Each episode gives you practical quality and reliability tools you can use during the design phase — so your team catches problems early, avoids costly rework, and ships products people can depend on.
You'll hear solo episodes on early-stage clarity, risk-based decision-making, and quality thinking, along with conversations with cross-functional experts in the series A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts.
If you want to design products people love for less time, less cost, and a whole lot fewer headaches — this is your place.
Hosted by Dianna Deeney, consultant, coach, and author of Pierce the Design Fog. Subscribe: newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 206 episodes
- Customer Discovery Across Product Stages, with Ashley Phillips · 40 min · Season 7 Episode 4Ashley Phillips joins Dianna to discuss how customer discovery changes across startups, hypergrowth teams, and established products. Customers may surprise a team with new ways…
- Two Ways We Jump: Speed and Certainty · 10 min · Season 7 Episode 3In this solo episode of Quality during Design, Dianna looks at two reasons product development teams jump from a partial understanding of a problem to a committed solution: speed…
- When Building Gets Cheap, Decisions Matter More, with Ashley Roach · 37 min · Season 7 Episode 2Fast prototyping changes the constraint. When software, AI tools, and other rapid-prototyping methods make it inexpensive to turn an idea into something testable, the challenge…
- Why Do We Jump? About the Moment Before We Commit · 7 min · Season 7 Episode 1When a project goes off track, we usually look back and say, “We didn’t define the problem, and we jumped.” That sounds like a process breakdown, as if one good checklist or gate…
- The Cracks Between Good Designs, with Mike Fedorov (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts) · 41 min · Season 3 Episode 23Why do well-designed initiatives keep coming apart when they reach reality? Mike Fedorov, who spent 26 years in supply chain and operations at Mars and Accenture and now co-leads…
- Decision Room Carry: Why Your Best Decisions Disappear on Monday · 15 min · Season 6 Episode 24A cross-functional team can make what seems like a solid Friday decision, captured in minutes and agreed to in the room. Only then nothing moves on Monday. Drawing on Agnes…
- From Tools to Teamwork — 200 Episodes of Rethinking Quality during Design · 20 min · Season 6 Episode 23In this milestone episode, Dianna reflects on how the thinking evolved from quality methods to product development processes, to team dynamics, and ultimately to one central…
- Influence Without the Title, with Jenny Wanger (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts) · 39 min · Season 3 Episode 22Why do product teams stay misaligned? Jenny Wanger explains the structural problems: efficiency-focused handoff workflows, unclear strategy, and people left cleaning up decisions…
- What Are You Really Trying to Learn? Chad Schneider on Prototyping with Purpose (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts) · 33 min · Season 3 Episode 21The episode features Chad Schneider, CEO and founder of Root3 Labs, discussing prototyping as a discipline focused on answering specific questions to reduce technical, schedule…
- The Most Expensive Question You Didn't Ask · 8 min · Season 6 Episode 22Engineering rework often comes from unasked questions or using the wrong tool at the wrong fidelity. Dianna outlines three common prototyping traps: the “ta-da” trap, where teams…
- Local LLMs: Where to Actually Start, with Vincent Deeney (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts) · 36 min · Season 3 Episode 20Most of the social conversation around AI is aimed at business owners and programmers, but if you’re an engineer or quality professional, you might be wondering how to actually…
- The Knowledge Your Team Has That Nobody's Using · 11 min · Season 6 Episode 21Late-breaking insights in product development aren’t caused by negligence but by a lack of structure that pulls existing team knowledge into concept discussions early, when…
- Beyond the Pipeline: Rethinking Engineering Careers with Cassie Leonard (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts) · 34 min · Season 3 Episode 19The episode features Cassie Leonard—former aerospace technical leader, executive coach, and author of STEM Moms and Beyond the Pipeline—explaining why the traditional linear…
- The Quiet System: Why Your Lessons Learned Aren’t Sticking · 9 min · Season 6 Episode 20Your team keeps solving the exact same problems project after project. What if the issue isn't careless execution, but a reactive system designed to hide failures rather than…
- Shannon Cummings on Why Marketing Should Be in the Room Before the First Prototype (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts) · 36 min · Season 3 Episode 18Your team keeps building the wrong thing, despite great effort. What if the problem isn’t execution. It’s the fog you’re navigating in? We speak with Shannon Cummings, a seasoned…
- Stop Being a Witness to Decisions That You Should be Helping to Shape · 12 min · Season 6 Episode 19Have you ever walked into a meeting (design review, planning session, phase gate) only to realize the decision was already made? That the discussion was just theater, not…
- Karli Auble THRIVEs: Positive Psychology Meets Engineering Rigor (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts) · 36 min · Season 3 Episode 17In this episode of 'Quality during Design', we delve into how engineers can avoid mistakes and oversights by managing stress and enhancing performance. Host Dianna Deeney…
- Constraints Unlock Creativity: Why Frameworks Beat Blank Slates in Product Concept Design · 12 min · Season 6 Episode 18Your team keeps brainstorming into a void, producing “meh” ideas that never stick. What if the problem isn’t a lack of creativity but the absence of the right constraints? In…
- Cut Through The Design Fog · 8 min · Season 6 Episode 17Early concept development often fails because teams lack clarity and alignment, leading to wasted time and resources. Discover the structured approach needed to cut through the…
- The Design Fog is Derailing Your Project · 11 min · Season 6 Episode 16Your team spent six weeks on a feature that got rejected in the demo. Your engineers built a prototype that totally missed the mark. This misalignment is the design fog, and it’s…
