Series 10 – Episode 4 – Why do electronics projects fail?

Power is an electronics hardware engineer and has been in the industry for about 30 years, 20 of those in consultancy. He founded ByteSnap with his business partner 15 years ago. ByteSnap is an electronics design consultancy based in Birmingham with customers across the globe from startups through to blue chip companies.

In this podcast, Power focuses on electronics projects, why they fail and offers his advice for those looking to get back on track.

“There are lots of causes of project failure, it’s a complicated area. I think you can group them broadly into time reasons, people reasons and … technical reasons.

“For time reasons, there’s issues of people launching products at the wrong time – they might be too early, too late they might not have allowed enough time, or they might over promise on time.

“… people issues are really around whether … they sort of fall in love with that product. So, they blinker themselves to problems that exist. They themselves [might] not be the right person to bring it to market.”

Over the last couple of years, additional challenges have arisen due to BREXIT and COVID 19.

“All of these things you’re describing fall into what you might call force majeure or black swans – external factors that, as a business, you don’t have any control over.”

Power goes on to talk about how designers can manage their supply chain for successful product development and advice for designers who are just starting out on their projects.

To hear more about why electronics projects fail and much more, you can listen to Electronic Specifier’s interview with Dunstan Power on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.