The Leading Practitioners' Resource for Product & Technology Development
92 Crescent Street. Waltham, MA 02453 Tel: 800-338-2223 or 781-891-8080
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Flexible Product Development
Workshop: May 12 - 13 / Atlanta, GA
An intensive two-day workshop focusing on accommodating and even embracing the mid-project changes that inevitably accompany true product innovation
Managing Customer Requirements in Volatile Environments
Audio Session: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 1:00pm
In this audio session, Preston Smith will guide you through the techniques of Flexible Development that allow developers to respond to new information, thus delivering fresher products to customers.
Design for Uncertainty
Audio Session: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 1:00pm
In this audio session, Preston Smith, of consultancy New Product Dynamics, presents techniques for enhancing flexible product development. He discusses why flexibility is valuable and mentions some of the tradeoffs involved. Smith also discusses the role of customers and their requirements in a flexible environment. He presents some detailed techniques for fostering a flexible product development process through product architectures, experimentation and the use of set-based design. He also examines the impact of flexible product development on internal factors such as development teams, decision-making, project management and the product development process. This presentation provides a comprehensive overview of some of the latest thinking on innovative, flexible approaches to product development. (11 pages)
Managing Customer Requirements in Volatile Environments: How Flexible Product Development Can Reduce the Cost of Change
Research | Posted: 2008-02-14
In fast-paced, competitive markets product requirements seem like a moving target. How can you and your team keep up? While freezing requirements may seem like a good idea, studies demonstrate that product development teams can rarely afford to freeze requirements before any development work begins. The challenge is accommodating change without wreaking havoc on the schedule and budget. In this audio session, Preston Smith presents an approach to Flexible Development that describes how to use the concept of product vision to guide design decisions and feature tradeoffs; how to use front-loaded prototyping to elicit feedback from customers and other stakeholders while the cost of change is low; how to engage both engineering and marketing professionals in customer research activities; how to create leading indicators for requirements change; how to find and involve lead users who will reveal untapped opportunities. (34 pages)
Design for Uncertainty Audio Session MP3
Research | Posted: 2007-10-07
MP3 down for Design for Uncertainty Audio Session
Using External Resources to Eliminate Product Development Queues
Research | Posted: 2007-01-04
By Don Reinertsen, Reinertsen and Associates Experienced product developers realize that there is a heavy price to be paid for operating a development organization at 100 percent utilization. Unless we could perfectly predict the work content of design tasks, when these tasks arrive, and the productivity of our individual development workers, such high levels of loading will cause queues in product development. Internal capacity is only one of a variety of paths to increase the capacity of the development organization. External capacity is a powerful alternative. However, using external capacity to support product development can be a little trickier than it first appears. In this commentary, Don Reinertsen discusses one of the common pitfalls of managing external capacity – the tactic known as “peak-shaving” – and how to avoid it. (3 pages)
Held Hostage by Delayed Technology?
Research | Posted: 2006-08-25
Don Reinertsen, President of Reinertsen & Associates For product developers, new technology can be our best friend or our worst enemy. It can be an unparalleled tool to improve product performance. An inelegant design using new technology often outperforms even the most brilliant design using old technology. Unfortunately, new technology has a dark side, introducing uncertainty into schedule and performance goals. Since a project can be as uncertain as its most uncertain element, the entire project schedule can be contaminated by the uncertainty of a single underlying technology. In this brief article, Don Reinertsen argues that the key is to keep technology off the critical path. He presents severalways of pursuing this strategyas well as an analytic approach for articulating the economic argument. (3 pages)
Design for Uncertainty: Audio Session Summary
Research | Posted: 2006-07-22
Related Links: Slides(29 pages)| Transcript (22 pages)|AudioIn this audio session, Preston Smith, of consultancy New Product Dynamics, presents techniques for enhancing flexible product development. He discusses why flexibility is valuable and mentions some of the tradeoffs involved. Smith also discusses the role of customers and their requirements in a flexible environment. He presents some detailed techniques for fostering a flexible product development process through product architectures, experimentation and the use of set-based design. He also examines the impact of flexible product development on internal factors such as development teams, decision-making, project management and the product development process. This presentation provides a comprehensive overview of some of the latest thinking on innovative, flexible approaches to product development. (11 pages)
Rethinking the Stage-Gate® Process A Reply to the Critics
Research | Posted: 2006-07-12
with Bob Becker, Product Development Executive, Advisor and MRT FastTrack Expert Panelist In this article, Bob Becker responds to recent criticisms of the Stage-Gate process. Becker argues that Stage-Gate remains a useful model but the key is in the implementation. Most of the defects in Stage-Gate implementations are due to rigid applications of the process that do not take advantage of common opportunities to perform some activities in parallel or to adapt the process to the type of project at hand. For Stage-gates to be a success, says Becker, it is necessary to plan projects to be right sized and efficient. The gates in the process should serve as business checkpoints; these checks should be performed with both the marketplace and the portfolio in mind. Becker also answers, point-by-point, the critics of the Stage-Gate framework. Concludes Becker: “A process that leverages historical learning and best practices from industry leaders, and which is also right sized for the mission at hand, is as close to optimal as you’ll get.” (5 pages)
Achieving Speed in New Product Development: Transcript of Audio Session
Research | Posted: 2006-01-20
In this transcript of a member’s-only audio session, Lawrie Cunningham (Black & Decker) and Preston Smith (New Product Dynamics) discuss a broad range of issues related to product development speed including: the role of decision-making in fast cycle time; the advantages of co-located teams and the pitfalls of outsourcing product development; critical trade-offs between time, cost and quality; enabling technologies for fast cycle-time; a ‘first-to-market’ vs. a ‘fast-follower’ strategy; and the requirements of highly regulated and highly complex product development environments. (18 pages)