Scaling technical judgment to a company competence to reduce risk and latency
A 15 years proven framework built for the demands of fast growing engineering organizations and shortening development cycles.
Content
Introducing FFSS, Jelm Franse and Jaco Friedrich
Why fast growing, Time pressured Companies need this Program
The roles of Architects, driving teams, decisions for success, balancing requirements
Why Generic Leadership Courses Fail
What makes this program Unique
Program overview
A 15 years proven program
Impact & Testimonies
Delivery Possibilities
From here to fully scalable program
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Managing Partners & principal consultants of Friedrich Franse Settels & Savenije B.V.
Jelm Franse
40+ years experience in high-tech companies developing complex high-tech systems
(Philips Research, LLNL, Singulus, Etel, ASML)
and consumer products (Philips Electronics)
MSc, TU Delft; PhD, TU Eindhoven
Jaco Friedrich
20+ years training experience trained thousands of engineers across Europe, the US and Asia
Psychologist, Engineer & Author of "Leadership Skills for Engineers"
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The Executive View: Three Converging Pressures
Technology Risk Is Leadership Risk
When systems grow beyond any single expert's grasp, the quality of leadership decisions becomes a primary risk.
Complexity Outpaces Expertise
Multi-domain integration, accelerated roadmaps, and cross-functional dependencies have outgrown what individual heroes can manage.
Decision Quality and Latency becomes a Competitive Disadvantage
Slow or deferred technical decisions result in program delays and missed windows of opportunity.
Wrong Technical Decisions Lead to Re-work, Customer Dissatisfaction and Financial Losss
The cost (as customers calculate it) of an unscheduled down of critical equipment in a semicon Fab (Litho, etch and deposit are typically wafer production capacity constrainers)
500-1000 k$ per hour for a regular fab
1000-3800 k$ per hour in an advanced IC Fab (and that's where the equipment is most complex)
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Hidden Bottlenecks in many R&D Organizations
Senior Engineers and architects are Overloaded
The most capable individuals absorb disproportionate decision load, creating single points of failure.
Critical Decisions not Escalated Timely
Issues reach leadership either too late to course-correct or too early, wasting executive bandwidth.
Authority and Confidence issues impact decision making
- Technical authority exists in name but organizational mandate lacks to drive cross-domain alignment.
- Senior Technical Staff lacks confidence to decide on critical issues
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The importance of Architects: Technical Leaders of Companies
Architects sit at the intersection of technical depth and organizational leadership — bridging engineering reality with business direction
Architects are critical for Three Leadership Dimensions
System Impact
Function & domain architects drive technical integration across system boundaries. They take business critical design decisions
Integration of Technologies
Lead designers and principal engineers bridge disciplines
Business Responsibility
A system meeting a balanced set of customer and business requirements is key to business success
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Architects are the Technical Leaders of the Company
The work of an architect spans far beyond design — it is about driving the system development and the people that do it
Requirements & Solution Definition
Engineering budgets, configuration control, and driving change
Stakeholder & Risk Management
Identify, communicate, and manage expectations across functions
Team Guidance & Delegation
Coaching, knowledge transfer, and aligning with other architects
Roadmapping & Integration
Functional validation, root cause resolution, and planning input
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Architecting: Balancing Multiple System Views Simultaneously, Deciding, Driving the Team
Great architects develop and reconcile competing perspectives — making deliberate design trade-offs to achieve a balanced, optimized system
Function & Performance
Cost of Goods & Cost to Own
Reliability
Manufacturability
Diagnostics
Serviceability
Every architectural decision is a trade-off. The architect's job is to make these trade-offs explicit, visible, and defensible — ensuring no single requirement dominates at the cost of the whole.
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Why Traditional Leadership Programs Fail To develop Engineers into Technical Leaders
Generic Leadership programs don't address the realities of technical leadership in complex R&D environments.
Generic Competency Models
Off-the-shelf frameworks ignore the domain-specific judgment that defines effective technical leadership.
Detached From Real Work
Classroom-based programs create a gap between what engineers learn and what they actually encounter and need to do under pressure.
Lack of Credibility in R&D Community
Programs perceived as "only soft" are dismissed by the very engineers they're meant to develop.
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Systems Development & Technical Leadership Program:
A unique blend of Leadership Skills, Concurrent Engineering & Semicon Equipment Domain Expertise
The intersection of business acumen, hands-on domain expertise, and human leadership defines the next generation of technical leaders in high-tech organizations.
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Technical Leadership = Scaling Technical Judgment
The goal is not only to create better individual leaders. It is to build a system where sound technical judgment is distributed, repeatable, and resilient — even if complexity increases and the organization grows rapidly.
This reframing shifts the focus from personal development to system design — treating leadership capability as an organizational asset, not a personal attribute.
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Our Proposition
Technical leadership training rooted in the heart of high-tech systems engineering, design, and manufacturing
Real Learning
- Evidence-based training methods (certified trainers)
- Learning by doing through "Real-Play" simulations
- Embedded in the organization for maximum transfer
Real World
- Case-based learning drawn from high-tech industry
- Senior practitioners with genuine innovation experience
- Program optimised over 15 years in world class high tech development company
Real Impact
- Role- and context-relevant skills only
- Structured development paths for technical talent
- Proven staff maturity and career acceleration effect
- Directly tied to business needs
Jaco to add info
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Standard Program Overview*
2 modules, each 4 days, 6 weeks apart — Learning and applying systems engineering and technical leadership skills
Systems Engineering Theory & Practice
Days 1 & 3
- Customer and corporate strategy impact on system requirements
- System breakdown: functions, physical modules, interfaces
- Requirements management: gather, elicit, document, balance, baseline
- Technical leadership simulations and team driving exercises
- Special topics: error budgeting, reliability, project management
Leadership Skills for System Engineers
Days 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8
- Decision making under uncertainty and conflicting interests
- Influencing stakeholders effectively
- Delegating, coaching, and building high-performing teams
- Delivering unpopular messages to difficult audiences
- Presenting confidently to top management
- The program can be tailored for optimum fit with the customer company's way of working processes or specific issues to be addressed
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Standard Program: Systems Engineering Made Practical
Day 1 — From Theoretical concepts to stakeholder presentation in a single day
📚 Morning: Concepts (plenary session)
- Fundamentals of Systems Engineering
- Roles of (system, function and domain) architects
- Functional and Physical system breakdown
- Interface definition & management
- Requirements engineering, budgeting & balancing
- Trade-off table, risk register and product navigator
🔧 Afternoon: Practice (in teams)
- Requirements identification and consolidation
- Functional and physical breakdown,
- Budgeting & concept generation
- Detail design and concept ranking
- Present to and convince stakeholders
- Wrap-up learnings
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Standard program: Leadership Skills for System Engineers
Days 2 and 4 — Technical Leadership in action
Uncertainty & Ambiguity
Navigating decisions in complex, fast-moving environments
Stakeholder Management
Presenting convincingly and transforming resistance into buy-in
Team Leadership
High-performing teams, delegation, coaching, and group dynamics
Decision Making
Decision tables, conflicting stakes, structured resolution
Influencing without Power
Influencing based on logic, knowledge. reputation, networking and alliance building
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Standard Program: Requirements Engineering
Day 3: Theory and Practice in a single (long) day
- Elicit: Proactively search for requirements from all stakeholders.
- Analyze: Ask and understand reason and context, clarify and challenge. Check their technical feasibility.
- Document: Write down the collected /derived requirements.
- Validate: Agree on the requirements with all stakeholders.
- Trace: Requirements are allocated to lower levels and traced back to their origin.
- Manage Changes: Changes to requirement (documents) are formally accepted and documented.
- Baseline: Consistent set of requirements (documents) is grouped and managed as a baseline.
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Standard Program Leadership Skills Part 2: Driving for success
Days 5–8 Stakeholder influencing, decision making, delegating, constructive feedback
Day 5-: Stakeholder Management
Morning
- Stakeholder identification and analysis
- "Stepping into the shoes of…" empathy exercise
Afternoon
- Building your story
- Convincing stakeholders with confidence
- The role of body language and team dynamics in persuasion
Day 6-8: Conflict, Decisions & Delegation
- Transforming resistance into buy-in
- Dealing with conflicting stakes
- Decision making tools
- Driving for solutions in contested territory
- Delegating in an inspiring and structured way
- The 5 steps of effective delegation
- Essence of coaching & knowledge transfer, inspiring and effective feedback for team success
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A Proven In-House Technical Leadership Development Program
Years in Operation
Continuously refined through real program cycles
Semiconductor OEM
Designed inside a leading equipment manufacturer
Technology Nodes Survived
Validated across multiple reorganizations and technology generations
Built for Complexity, High Time pressure Developments, Scaling up Technical Leadership capacity
More than 2000 Engineers and Architects trained, course evaluation always above 9 out of 10 points
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Observable Impact of the Program
Faster, Higher Quality Decisions
Reduced escalation cycles and improved decision quality at every level of the technical hierarchy
Stronger cross-domain Alignment
Shared technical language and decision making methods eliminate siloed decision-making across disciplines and decision avoidance.
More Effective Teams
Teams operate with greater autonomy and clarity, reducing the drag of unresolved technical ambiguity.
Reduced Key-Person Dependency
Technical judgment is distributed across the organization, not concentrated in a few irreplaceable individuals
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What participants said
Emma Song
Sr. Product Manager at ASML
The architect development program was one of the best trainings that I joined. The training had excellent settings. First, the content was well structured, in combination of theory and practice. Second, the group was open and supportive for each other. Third, the two trainers setting was the differential factor in comparison to any other courses. One trainer, Jaco, focused on psychological part, and the other had deep insights in the company (ASML). During the training, Jaco really paid attention to each individual trainee, to see what his/her strengths are and what he/she is struggling with. He had great sense of people’s feeling. Although it was only eight days, I felt like talking to an old friend when I was talking to Jaco at the end of the training.
Chip Mason
ASML Fellow
I had the extreme good fortune to attend a training course for ASML Architects. After six challenging days, our group of sixteen had universal praise for the course, and still higher praise for the manner in which Jaco shaped our experience. The course challenged us in many ways: what do our colleagues say about us? How do we interact with others? How do we deal with stress? How do we deal with resistance? What are our strengths and weaknesses? Difficult areas to explore…..
Rob Van Der Heijden
System Engineer for Sustainability at ASML
I followed the ASML specific Architect Development Course (run 25) which was set-up and given by Jaco. For me this has been a life changing experience. The key aspects that made this course a success for me were: the room for interaction and reflection; the good balance between theory (with the flipover, only using slides when needed) and hands-on practice; the deep knowledge of Jaco on the subjects; the way Jaco created a challenging but open atmosphere; and the final module to enable us to implement the things we learned. The course contained insight in the role of the architect at ASML (first module), a variety of effective communication skills and stress recognition and - handling.
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Delivery Method Options
FFSS trainers for hard and soft skills (scenario 1)
- Adaptations of course material to company specifics possible. Compensation is rate x hours + Travel expenses
- Initial Cost 175 keuro, 2 pilots, 56 keuro/program after that
Mixture: FFSS Soft Skill Trainers, Internal Hard Skill trainers (scenario 2)
- Internal staff trained on the job by FFSS co-trainer initially. Compensation is rate x hours + Travel expenses.
- Initial Cost 265 keuro, 1+3 pilots, 30 keuro/program after that
Train the trainers trajectory and completely in house after that (scenario 3)
- Train the trainer sessions. Continuous after care and delivery quality assurance after that. Compensation is hours x rate + expenses, later IP use fee and Q activity hours x rate.
- To be considered after scenario 1 or 2 is completed
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From first Engagement to regular Program (delivery scenario 1)
Our structured approach ensures a seamless transition from initial discussions to a successful program implementation in about 7 months, laying the groundwork for scaling and broad impact.
Start Engagement
- Select Target scenario
- Identify Interviewees
- Bring NDA in place
- Arrange P.O.
- ~ 1 Month
Diagnosis
- Interviews
- Analysis
- Customize curriculum,
- Propose success metrics.
- ~ 1 Month
Pilot Program 1
- Execute the first program iteration
- 16 selected participants,
- Gather real-time feedback.
- Evaluation of results
- ~ 7 weeks
Adapt & Refine
- Collect participant inputs
- Adjust program
- ~ 2 weeks
Pilot Program 2
Execute the second program iteration
- 16 selected participants,
- Gather real-time feedback.
- Evaluation of results
- ~ 7 weeks
Fine Tuning
- Collect participant inputs
- Tweek program
- ~ 2 weeks
Start Regular Programs
- 16-20 Participants/run
- 2 FFSS trainers/run
- Continuos Monitoring
- Capacity: 1 run/months
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From here to Regular Scalable Program:
Designed to build Executive Confidence
A structured, low-risk entry point to validate the model within your organization before broader deployment.
Executive-Sponsorship agreement
CTO or VP-level sponsorship to ensure organizational mandate and access to key people and real technical challenges.
Indication of prefered delivery method.
Diagnosis and Aproach Validation
Interviews with ±20 key technical staff and managers to validate the approach. 1 month, 20 company hours.
Initial tailoring to the company specific ways of working and issues. ± 80 FFSS hours
Success Criteria proposal & agreement
Partipant feedback on:
- Decision speed and quality, Cross-domain alignment
- Requirements management
- Team Effectiveness
Limited Cohort Pilots & Evaluation
- A focused group of 16-20 first assignment talented team Leads/Lead engineers to be developed into senior Technical Leaders . 2×4 days training by 2 FFSS principal trainers
- 1.5 hr evaluation session with executive sponsor (+?)
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Industrializing Technical Leadership in Complex R&D Systems