Applying Upstream Thinking in Engineering Projects

You poured money into your agile transformation. Your teams are busy. Standups, retros, all the ceremonies—check. The reports say velocity is up. But look past the new roles, the vanity metrics, the maturity assessments. It still feels slow. Where’s the business impact? The old playbook says double down. Fix the teams. Bring in more coaches. More training. Push the flywheel harder. But most leaders I talk to are out of patience—and out of budget. So they give up. The theater rolls on. The old project mindset creeps back in. Here’s the hard truth: You can’t fix this at the team level. The problem isn’t your teams. It’s the game they’re forced to play. After 15 years helping companies build real agility, here's a better pattern that emerged as more sustainable and effective: stop trying to fix the teams. Go upstream. Fix the system they’re stuck in. Start or Pivot to the company or portfolio level. Create a company-level initiatives Kanban. apply the patterns and best practices of product ownership at the portfolio level. Use Lean Product Management to derisk your enterprise bets. When leaders engage at this level, they stop being passengers in a transformation that’s happening to them. They become the drivers. They get the power to lead real change. They can set priorities and make tradeoffs that create clarity for dozens of teams. Suddenly, alignment and collaboration become possible. Autonomy and Purpose unlock motivation and engagement in the trenches. They can limit work in process. That creates focus. It signals real leadership. They can reorganize around outcomes. Break painful dependencies. Point capacity at what matters most. I’ve seen it firsthand. A few well-placed interventions upstream lead to outsized gains: faster delivery, more innovation, clearer teams, real value. This video is an excerpt from a case study where leaders at a global futures exchange changed the trajectory of their SAFe-based Product Operating Model transformation when we went upstream to introduce a product-oriented leaner portfolio management approach. Going upstream used to be the maverick move. Most consulting firms avoided it. (can you guess why? hint - think of their incentives / business model ) Now, it’s going mainstream. Leaders like you want real agility ROI—not vanity, not theater. What's one small way you could go upstream next week? (if you want some ideas - happy to discuss)

You're going to waste 75% of your innovation budget. Not because your team isn't talented. Not because customers are unpredictable. Not because the market is too competitive. Because you're spending time and money developing the wrong products when you should be spending time upstream on understanding what are the right products to build. Here's the math: Average company: → $10M innovation budget → 10 products in development → 8 will fail (80% failure rate) → Wasted: $8M on products that don't work → Cost to fix failed products post-launch: 100X more than getting it right initially Alternative approach: → Reallocate $2M upstream to opportunity identification → Discover all unmet customer outcomes before ideation → Develop only products addressing validated opportunities → Success rate: 86% instead of 17% → Saved: $6M in avoided failures → ROI on upstream investment: 300% W. Edwards Deming proved this in manufacturing: "You cannot inspect quality into a product. It must be built in from the design." Same principle for innovation. You cannot iterate your way to product-market fit. You must design for it from the beginning. The difference between innovation as art and innovation as science: Art approach: → Generate ideas → Build prototypes → Test with customers → Iterate based on feedback → Repeat until something works (if ever) → 17% success rate Science approach: → Map customer's job-to-be-done → Identify 50-150 desired outcomes → Quantify which outcomes are underserved → Design solutions addressing multiple unmet needs → Launch knowing it will work → 86% success rate The companies pulling ahead aren't more creative. They're more systematic. They've stopped treating innovation like creative expression and started treating it like process engineering. If three-quarters of your product development efforts will fail, you have plenty of budget that can be reallocated to preventing those failures. Are you inspecting innovation into products through trial and error—or designing it in through systematic process?

Here’s something I don’t see anyone talking about: How engineering can reduce COPQ – especially in low volume, high mix manufacturing. Because this type of manufacturing mix focuses (mostly) on customized products, design quality is very important. Typically, design review quality varies dramatically project-to-project. If you don't manage design changes effectively, errors inevitably slip through the cracks - leading to greater downstream impact. Poor design quality upstream drives manufacturing errors downstream. These manufacturing errors make their way to production and eventually to their customer. This ultimately results in rework, scrap, and even returns or warranty claims. And a higher than acceptable COPQ. The problem is: most engineering orgs don’t practically make this connection in how they work day to day. Because they don’t own a COPQ number - but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. The highest performing companies we talk to get engineering directly involved in improving COPQ. They take the annual COPQ figure and set a target for engineering to improve it — by 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%… Then, it’s up to engineering to define and execute an engineering roadmap that delivers the target. There’s various levels of maturity to this: 1. Some companies don’t track COPQ at all 2. Some track it, but don’t assign engineering a portion of the target to own 3. Some give engineering a target, but don’t closely monitor attainment 4. The best give engineering a target, and that team hits the target consistently YoY For low volume, high mix manufacturing companies, reinventing a single design workflow can have a downstream impact on COPQ within the span of a year. Take Schneider Electric for example: by optimizing their Peer Check process, they decreased COPQ by 15% in less than 12 months. Simple doesn’t mean easy. It means taking a hard look at how your upstream engineering processes affect downstream manufacturing deliverables. And then being honest about how engineering can be more proactive in impacting these numbers. #copq #designreview #engineering

“Research is slowing this launch down” – Key stakeholder. False. You’re just doing research at the wrong part of the cycle. Let me explain: The most common complaint I hear from stakeholders is that research slows everything down. When research shows up after the spec is written, it becomes a 2–3 week delay in the middle of an already moving train. And when that happens, the natural question becomes: “Do we really need to add this step…or can we skip it?” That’s where research teams can be put in a poor position. Research becomes low-impact if your work adds time to the process without shifting its direction. The best teams look at what the product strategy is and what decisions and roadmap items the team will be working on in the next 4–8 weeks. Then they start doing the research before the team starts building, so they can deeply understand the problem space and gather insights through customer surveys or interviews. When research happens earlier, it becomes a foundational input to the project. If research is added after the spec is already written, you’re adding 2–3 weeks and only influencing minor decisions. The high-impact work happens upstream, when research guides the team before the work begins. For example, say you're building a new feature. Ahead of any development work, the best researchers are getting close to customers and asking: - What does the customer use today to solve this? - What are their needs? - What are they looking for in a solution? - What are their expectations around the design? That’s where research can answer the key questions and inform the capability itself, not just validate what’s already been built.

Offshore Projects Don't Fail Offshore. They Fail on Paper work Most offshore project failures in Nigeria don't start in the field. They start during planning just weeks before a single pipe is laid or a wellhead is touched. From my experience in upstream project management and petroleum engineering, I've observed a recurring pattern. Projects move into execution carrying three silent killers: 1. Incomplete risk assessments, leading to HAZOP studies done in isolation, disconnected from the subsurface picture. 2. Unrealistic schedules, built on optimism, with no buffer for Nigeria's regulatory and logistics realities fators. 3. Poor integration between subsurface and surface teams, reservoir engineers and facilities teams working in parallel, not in partnership. By the time these gaps surface offshore, the damage is already compounding. What are the results? a)Cost overruns that erode the project's economic model before first oil. b)Delays that cascade across JV partner obligations and FPSO contracts. c) Non-Productive Time (NPT),and in deepwater, every idle hour costs what a week onshore would. What works instead, is define consistent: 1) Integrated project planning: subsurface, surface, and PM teams aligned on the same assumptions from Day 1 2) Cross-functional alignment early: HSE, procurement, engineering, and operations in the room during Front-End Loading, not during execution firefighting. 3) Strong project governance, Stage-Gate reviews with teeth, live risk registers, and PMO oversight that reports upward honestly 4) Digital oilfield integration with real-time data flowing into project dashboards so decisions are made on facts, not lag reports. 5) Realistic schedule baselines built in Primavera P6, stress-tested against. Nigeria-specific risks: community relations, logistics, regulatory approvals. Execution does not fail randomly. It fails predictably, and it announces itself during planning, to anyone willing to look. The companies managing Nigeria's deepwater assets include; ExxonMobil at Erha, TotalEnergies at Egina, Chevron at Agbami, Shell at Bonga, and all carry this planning discipline into their most complex projects. It is not a luxury. It is the only thing standing between a profitable FID and a cost overrun that rewrites the entire economic case. What has been your biggest challenge in offshore project execution, and where did the failure actually begin? Please,share your experience on the comment session. #OffshorePetroleum #ProjectManagement #Deepwater #OilAndGas #Energy #ProjectGovernance #UpstreamEnergy #DigitalOilfield #NPT #RiskManagement #PetroleumEngineering #FrontEndLoading #NigerDelta #EnergyTransition #SPE2026 #ExxonMobil #Shell #TotalEnergies #ChevronCorporation #ENI #SaharaGroup #BPplc #ConocoPhillips #Equinor #CNOOC #Repsol #Petrobras #Schlumberger #Halliburton #BakerHughes

Most upstream project failures don’t begin in construction. They begin much earlier — in weak engineering management, rushed FEED, unclear design criteria, and unmanaged interfaces. I’ve seen how Brownfield constraints, Greenfield overdesign, poor scope control, and weak multidisciplinary alignment quietly create delays, cost overruns, and execution pain later. That’s exactly why I wrote this new LinkedIn newsletter: an engineering management perspective on what truly drives project success in upstream oil & gas — from concepts and failure potentials to corrective actions and practical leadership lessons. If you work in FEED, project engineering, oil & gas delivery, plant design, or engineering leadership, this will resonate. Read the full article, and if this kind of leadership and engineering insight adds value, subscribe to my YouTube channel as well: https://lnkd.in/dVPF-bUB #EngineeringManagement #OilAndGas #UpstreamOilAndGas #FEED #ProjectManagement #Brownfield #Greenfield #EngineeringLeadership #ProcessEngineering #PlantDesign #ProjectControls #OperationalExcellence #EnergyIndustry #ProjectExecution #Leadership