I bet you also had BAs assigned to babysit the projects to ensure follow through.
I wish! Nope, just me, my manager and the New Product Introduction group following along on project status. My last 7 years as a Semiconductor Engineer primary responsibility involved new product intro and ownership of the portion of the new product portfolio for the complex parts I had recently introduced. Secondarily, I had many in-house projects to boost throughput, enhance automation, introduce Flash memories/help the fab gurus dial in their new process, cross discipline problem solving and more (I far preferred special projects over the mundane routine stuff). We were lean before lean was a thing. All new product intros were guided by an MS Project plan written by myself or others. I wrote project plans for most of the site specific special projects I owned. Updating the plan was the responsibility of those who were assigned the individual tasks within the plan.
Back in the 1980s was more like you describe. As I was designing data structures, editors, operating system, calibration routines, decomposers, test solutions for an in house rack and stack "Auto-Fmax Tester" that we called the AFT (performed Fmax, Tset, Thold, MinPW, Trec testing), there was a BA anxiously looking over our shoulders running back and forth to management reporting every shred of our progress. Two other guys were working on the hardware side of that system, I owned the software development side. THAT was a fun project.
Do you, by any chance, remember a company called "TLA"?
Doesn't ring a bell..What do they do?
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