Quality during Design

Dianna Deeney
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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.

  1. Sep 10

    Why Do We Jump? About the Moment Before We Commit

    When 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 approval would have prevented it. But design fog runs deeper than missing process. It’s what’s happening in us. Over the next few episodes on Quality During Design, we’re exploring a quieter question: When we jump to a solution, why? Before we understand the problem, we start building. We skip questioning and investigating, jump the peak of the design diamond, and reach for a solution that feels like progress, but is really an emotional shield against the discomfort of not knowing. It’s the "Ta-Da Flop" waiting to happen. In this Season 7 opener, Dianna Deeney introduces the roadmap for this season's arc: What the "Anti-Jump" looks like: Staying in the fog on purpose to uncover the design inputs that actually matter.Why the jump is so hard to resist: In the moment, jumping doesn't feel like failure—it feels like forward progress.The Three Internal Engines: Speed: When additive manufacturing, digital twins, and AI make building cheap, jumping gets easier.Certainty: When we’re convinced we already know, we stop checking.The Deeper Engine: A more human driver running underneath both, saved for our season finale.The Roadmap: How upcoming guests like Ashley Roach (on the "tweak loop" and one-way vs. two-way doors) connect directly into this framework. Your Practice Question for the Week: When you catch yourself jumping this week, don’t judge it. Just ask: "Did I jump because it was easy to build, or because I was certain I already knew?" Resources Mentioned: Featured Book: Pierce the Design Fog: Develop High-Quality Products Faster Through Team Innovation by Dianna Deeney. Learn more at piercethedesignfog.com.Double Diamond Diagram: Check out the accompanying graphic in the blog post at deeneyenterprises.com/qdd/podcast/s7e1.Subscribe to Quality During Design so you don't miss an episode in this season's arc! Other podcast episodes you may like: Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning, AI, and VR in Design EngineeringStop Being a Witness to Decisions That You Should be Helping to ShapeFoundations-Exploring the Problem Space, A Key Principle for Robust Product Design and Project SuccessThe Design Fog is Derailing Your ProjectSend us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.  Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.  Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly) Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.  Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

    Why Do We Jump? About the Moment Before We Commit

  2. Aug 27

    The Cracks Between Good Designs, with Mike Fedorov (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

    Why 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 Applied AI Labs, explains that the failure usually isn’t a bad call inside a single design. It’s the coordination layer: the seams between teams, systems, and the data that no one remembers how to work.  He walks through a transformation that stalled for months, what AI can actually do to close the gap, and the habits separating the AI programs that work from the 95% that quietly fail.  Highlights The coordination layer is where modern design fails, not inside the design. The handoffs, systems, and data in the spaces between teams accumulate more opportunities to break than the parts themselves.The data is always a little wrong. Design for that. Waiting for perfect data is waiting forever; build systems that detect, tolerate, or self-correct small errors instead.AI doesn’t make the call; it should make the call obvious. AI’s job is to watch the data, connect the dots, and put the two or three important things in front of a human who decides.Mike's three rules that work when implementing AI for the coordination layer.Visit the podcast blog for a special infographic from Mike. Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.  Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.  Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly) Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.  Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

    The Cracks Between Good Designs, with Mike Fedorov (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

  3. Aug 13

    Decision Room Carry: Why Your Best Decisions Disappear on Monday

    A 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 Carroll’s observation that “no one is carrying it,” the episode argues this decision room carry problem isn’t solved by better documentation or tools like Jira and decision matrices, because an assigned decision is not an authored one.  The gap is cognitive: the people who must execute weren’t reasoning, stress-testing, and co-authoring the trade-offs when the decision was made.  Using design-for-manufacturing as an example, we explain how Pierce the Design Fog and its ADEPT framework (align, discover, examine, prioritize, teamwork) are designed to create real-time co-authorship so decisions carry into execution, especially in high-consequence product development. Agnes Carroll, Decision Architect for Complexity, Loomworx Studio. Article: "The Decision the Room Will Not Carry"  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/decision-room-carry-agnes-carroll-2sasc/ Studio: https://loomworxstudio.com Design & Quality Snapshot: Services - Deeney Enterprises Blog post for this episode: https://deeneyenterprises.com/qdd/podcast/decision-room-carry-why-your-best-decisions-disappear-on-monday/ Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.  Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.  Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly) Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.  Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

    Decision Room Carry: Why Your Best Decisions Disappear on Monday

  4. Jul 23

    From Tools to Teamwork — 200 Episodes of Rethinking Quality during Design

    In 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 idea: Quality during Design happens when teams align early and think together intentionally. In this episode  The question that has guided all 200 episodes  Why good engineering teams still build products that miss the mark  The evolution from tools → process → people → systems  The "Design Fog" and why the earliest product decisions matter most  What a backyard orchard taught Dianna about product development  How brainwriting led to the ADEPT Framework  Why the future of quality starts before engineering design begins Featured ideas  Design Fog  ADEPT Framework  Concept Space Model  Brainwriting  Early concept development  Cross-functional alignment  Building the right product before building the product right Thank you Whether this is your first episode or you've been listening since 2021, thank you for being part of the Quality During Design community. Your questions, conversations, and willingness to rethink product development have shaped this podcast as much as the ideas shared. Here's to the next 200 episodes. Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.  Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.  Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly) Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.  Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

    From Tools to Teamwork — 200 Episodes of Rethinking Quality during Design

  5. Jul 9

    Influence Without the Title, with Jenny Wanger (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

    Why do product teams stay misaligned? Jenny Wanger explains the structural problems: efficiency-focused handoff workflows, unclear strategy, and people left cleaning up decisions they didn't help make. She shares tested practices for influencing upstream decisions without formal authority: clarifying strategy through curiosity, bringing the right people in early (pre-mortems work), and publicly recognizing collaborators. Key Takeaways Fire drills and half-finished features often stem from lost customer context in handoff-driven workflowsUse curiosity, not criticism, to surface strategy gaps - Interview leaders and highlight missing piecesRun cross-functional pre-mortems early; rank risks by likelihood × impact, not opinionMake others look good publicly (CC their boss); build a reputation as someone worth invitingTimestamps 02:42 The Misalignment Before Picture05:05 The Handoff Trap17:00 Strategy Gaps & Curiosity23:00 Pre-Mortems & Early Involvement32:00 First StepsResources Jenny Wanger: jennywanger.com | LinkedInYour Challenge Pick one: Share a kudos with someone's manager, approach a colleague about a past bottleneck, or volunteer to run a pre-mortem. Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.  Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.  Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly) Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.  Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

    Influence Without the Title, with Jenny Wanger (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

  6. Jun 25

    What Are You Really Trying to Learn? Chad Schneider on Prototyping with Purpose (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

    The episode features Chad Schneider, CEO and founder of Root3 Labs, discussing prototyping as a discipline focused on answering specific questions to reduce technical, schedule, and market risk.  He explains that prototypes need not resemble the final product, citing examples like using a cardboard mockup to verify hand access for connectors and 3D-printed sizing models to understand surgical constraints.  Chad describes managing complex, time-constrained projects by rigorously evaluating requirements as needs versus wants. He uses quick calculations and low-fidelity prototypes to resolve unknowns early — when changes are cheap — rather than waiting for expensive tooling decisions to reveal them.  He also shares a hospital device concept that was canceled after observing nurses (who immediately removed the cable-concealing covers the team had designed) framing 'killing' the project as a win.   Key takeaway: before you build, write down the question you're trying to answer, then find the lowest-resolution way to answer it. For more highlights, visit the blog post. 00:00 Start With The Question 01:22 Meet Chad Schneider 02:25 What Root Three Builds 04:46 Prototype Means Question 06:25 Why Skipping Costs More 07:17 Cardboard Box Prototype 09:27 Managing Deadlines And Needs 13:47 Risk Based Prototyping Culture 21:48 User Feedback Can Kill Projects 30:47 Final Takeaways And Challenge Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.  Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.  Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly) Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.  Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

    What Are You Really Trying to Learn? Chad Schneider on Prototyping with Purpose (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

  7. Jun 11

    The Most Expensive Question You Didn't Ask

    Engineering 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 build polished prototypes to impress stakeholders before the concept is stable, anchoring the team to an early solutionthe “I’m smarter than cardboard” trap, where engineers skip low-fidelity physical models in favor of analysis even when the real question is usabilitythe “validation theater” trap, where teams default to expensive, validation-level rigs before confirming they’re asking the highest-risk, right question. All three share a root cause: jumping from idea to build without defining what must be learned and the appropriate fidelity.  She invites listeners to subscribe for a future episode on prototyping done well. 02:08 Trap 1: The 'ta-da' trap 04:19 Trap 2: The "I'm smarter than cardboard" trap 05:43 Trap 3: The "validation theater" trap Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.  Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.  Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly) Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.  Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

    The Most Expensive Question You Didn't Ask

  8. May 28

    Local LLMs: Where to Actually Start, with Vincent Deeney (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

    Most 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 use these tools to help with your own work processes or information pools. While many people are waiting for their company to provide an AI strategy, there is a way to start building your own private "AI intern" today without being a coder or a programmer. In this episode, I’m joined by technologist Vincent Deeney to discuss the practical side of running Large Language Models (LLMs) locally on your own hardware. We move past the hype to talk about how "playing" with these models is actually a high-level form of learning that can help you bridge technical gaps and soar in your productivity. Vincent introduces a mental model for your personal development: the "Senior Engineer vs. Intern" workflow. You’ll learn how to use elite frontier models to help you architect complex concepts, then hand that plan over to a local model to execute the repetitive, data-heavy tasks.  Whether you want to automate your morning research or just understand the "why" behind AI behavior, this episode is your guide to becoming a more capable, AI-literate professional. We don't just talk about AI - we give you a roadmap to start executing on your own. Listen in and visit the podcast blog for extra resources: https://deeneyenterprises.com/qdd/podcast/s3e20 Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.  Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.  Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly) Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.  Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

    Local LLMs: Where to Actually Start, with Vincent Deeney (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Dianna Deeney
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    203
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Deeney Enterprises, LLC
  • Show Website
    Quality during Design