S5E42 Brad Hirayama | How to Accelerate the Speed of Engineering, Episode 6

What this episode covers

Brad Hirayama, a Staff Engineer at Synaptic Medical with prior experience at Abbott and NuVera Medical, discusses accelerating engineering speed through robust planning, psychological safety, and strategic tool adoption. He emphasizes that 'slow is smooth and smooth is fast,' advocating for upfront risk identification and using checklists like FDA design controls to prevent scope creep. Hirayama highlights the importance of building trust with niche suppliers to mitigate external risks and shares lessons from a failed PDM rollout where insufficient training for non-engineering teams caused delays. Finally, he recommends tools like Notion for centralized information access and Loom for efficient communication to maintain team momentum.