BACKGROUND
Why This Workshop Is Important to You
Change is an
inescapable part of new product innovation. When you are innovating,
change will happen in the middle of a development project. However,
the processes and techniques that management commonly uses to
develop products (Six Sigma, Stage-Gate®, and project office, for
instance) are not designed to facilitate change. Instead, they
encourage heavy upfront planning and reward managers who stick to
plan. Rather than resisting or denying change, why not build systems
that embrace it?
This workshop shows
you how to build such flexible product development systems. It was
inspired by the acclaimed recent model of agile software
development, although most of the agile software tools depend on
some unique characteristics of software. Consequently, in this
workshop we rebuild flexibility for non-software products by
understanding what the agilists have done.
This topic is most
timely. Although changes—from customers, in the marketplace, and in
the technologies going into new products—are spiraling, pressure
from the financial markets is pushing managers toward certainty: do
it right the first time, follow the plan, eliminate waste, and avoid
surprises. Unfortunately, this trend toward conformity is taking its
toll: studies show that new-product innovation has decreased
dramatically over the past decade. This workshop aims directly at
restoring innovation by reintroducing flexibility so that developers
can excite customers and bewilder competitors.
That is, these tools
can be used defensively to cope with imposed change, and they can
also be applied offensively to create an environment of change that
overwhelms the competition.
We will explore
several categories of tools to enhance flexibility. We explain each
tool and consider its strengths and limitations. Then we turn to a
case study that runs for the length of the workshop, where we apply
the tool to the case study project to gain essential hands-on
practice in applying it. You will see not only how you apply the
tool, but how others, working independently, apply it too. |
