3Evaluating the Maturity of Developing Technology
3.1 Background
Amongst the most fundamental questions to ask when developing a new technology or product is: ‘How far have I got and what remains to be done?’ If the answers to such questions were easy, then the past would not be littered with examples of technologies that have gone wrong.
Every engineer has his favourite stories, either from history or from his own experiences.
Scandinavians like to quote the example of the warship Vasa, which listed and sank immediately after being launched in August 1628. The ship's builders had been too afraid to tell the Swedish king that his ideas wouldn't work. And there is a lesson in this tale even for today's engineering companies – there is still a fear of giving bad news.
In the United Kingdom, an oft‐quoted example is the Advanced Passenger Train (APT). The ambition in the 1980s was to develop a tilting passenger train that could negotiate the ‘curvaceous’ West Coast Main Line and reduce journey times from London to Glasgow, which it was well capable of doing (in fact, at the time of writing, the APT still holds the record of 3 hours 55 minutes for the northbound journey). However, the technology was developed in the public eye and involved fare‐paying passengers – something that no right‐minded engineer would ever recommend. Not surprisingly, the problems that arose on the development programme, which were quite typical for a technology still maturing, became a source of ridicule ...