Will Townson

Engineering Program Manager

972-951-6201 www.linkedin.com/in/townson
townson@suddenlink.net 4045 Preston Hills Circle, Celina, TX 75009

Engineering Program Manager with expertise in electronic hardware design, embedded software and
firmware development, new product development (NPD), and project management. Directed cross-
functional teams in video, imaging, streaming media, and DSP embedded system product development.

Achievements Preview
 Managed 8 video and streaming media product development projects with 90% on-time delivery.
 Pioneer and subject matter expert of the silicon-to-system product development process for new
digital media DSPs. Mentored project management, engineering, and external vendors in the process.
 Collaborated with system engineering and software architects to create project plans which included
project schedule, budget, engineering resources, and risk plan for program approval gate reviews.
 Directed engineering teams, tracked project progress, managed project risk, and reported project
status to VP level of a Fortune 500 company for new product development projects.
 Combined embedded system design expertise with formal project management training to deliver
product development projects 100% on time to numerous industry trade shows.
 Released to market a DSP product per month. Identified the critical path, determined the product
development bottleneck, and overhauled the product acceptance test to reduce time to market by 10%.

Product Definition
Phase-Gate Review Process
Concurrent Engineering
New Product Introduction (NPI)
Technical Summary
Project Management Plan
Requirements Management
Cross-Functional Global Teams
Product Life Cycle Management
Risk Plan/Risk Management
Prototyping
Validation Test Plan
Microsoft Project

Professional Experience
Texas Instruments, Incorporated, Dallas, Texas
The world leader in digital signal processing (DSP) and analog technologies.
Product Manager, Application Specific Products, Catalog DSP 2008-2009
 Simultaneously managed 9 projects and released to market (RTM) a DSP product a month with a
budget over $2.5M. Reported project status, action items, issues resolution, and lessons learned to the
product team and senior management.
 Created Gantt chart schedules; work breakdown structure (WBS), established task dependencies,
estimated duration with input from the product team, and assigned tasks to cross-functional resources
from applications and software engineering, product marketing, marketing communications, finance
and operations to align product announcements with product availability.
 Applied critical chain project management to identify the product development bottleneck, then
coordinated software engineering, marketing communications, and vendor deliverables to produce
reliable project schedules to communicate to customers.
 Overhauled the product acceptance test by redefining the first article, pre-scheduling travel, and
improving issues tracking and reporting. As a result, customer satisfaction improved, cycle time
reduced by 30%, and risk was removed from the budget.
 Owned the vendor selection process, supervised the Request for Proposal (RFP), managed vendor
deliverables, and signed-off acceptance of the product.
 Wrote Statement of Work (SOW) and worked with legal department for approval and appropriate
senior management signature. Delegated the Product Requirement Document (PRD) to engineering.
 Co-authored roles and responsibilities for new product development projects based on lessons learned
which improved cross-functional team efficiency.

Project Manager, Application Specific Products, Streaming Media 2001-2008

 Produced the evaluation products for each of TI’s flagship digital media DSPs. Negotiated product
requirements with multiple business units, created project plans, called project kick-off meetings, and
held gate and design reviews with senior management and cross-functional team. Achieved a 100%
on time delivery record.
 Developed a new product development process on DM642, then became the subject matter expert
when the product released to market only 3½ months after first silicon. This product supported sales
of 10,000,000 DM642 devices in the first 4 years of production.
 Managed the hardware development of pre-silicon design verification hardware saving 6 months and
$1,250,000 of silicon re-spin time and cost. This real-time development hardware is also in use by
the lead customer for embedded software development, reducing their time to market by 18 months.
 Assigned the IPTV project and given a 6 month deadline to deliver working prototype hardware with
embedded software at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES). Led the team in project planning and
negotiated scope changes with senior management which enabled on-time delivery. Demonstration at
CES led to a number of new business opportunities.
 Created a flexible project budget to trade-off cost and schedule, to satisfy both internal budgets and
customer requirements.
 Devised a flexible hardware architecture which supports multiple applications from a single hardware
platform. This approach has been re-used on other products with competing hardware requirements.

Education, Professional Development, and Skills

 Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester MA
 Operations Research, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX
 Accounting I & II, North Lake College, Irving, TX

 Orange Belt - Managing a Single Project with
Microsoft Office Project 2003
 Risk Management - PMI Dallas - 7 PDUs
 Project Management Professional - in process
(PMI PMP)
Select Awards, Honors, and Associations
 2 US Patents and 6 TI Patents: Hardware Design
 Elected Texas Instruments Member Group Technical
Staff (MGTS): Top 15% of technical community
 Project Management Institute (PMI) Dallas Chapter
 PMI New Product Development SIG
 Critical Chain Project Management
 Managing Accelerated Projects
 Managing Integrated Projects
 Project Management Foundations
 Electronics Design News
Innovation of the Year:
Computers and Peripherals category
 Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers (IEEE)