Advance praise for Developing Products in Half the Time Second Edition New Rules, New Tools Preston G. Smith * Donald G. Reinertsen "This is an exceptional book! Get a new highlighter before you start. There are so many 'ah ha's' in each chapter you will never make it through with an old one." Don LaCombe, Ford Motor Company, Product Development Process Leadership "An excellent book with a strong treatment of the cycle-time consequences of overloading your development capacity. It provides powerful and practical concepts for dealing with this issue." Andrew Aquart, Director Product Development, Cordis, a Johnson & Johnson Company "This is practical, useful stuff for people competing in highly competitive fast moving business." Dr. Paul Borrill, Chief Scientist, Sun Microsystems "3M has absorbed many of the tools from the original edition, and this new one will be even more useful.
The topic of incremental innovation is crucial to us, and I really appreciate its balanced treatment." Ronald H. Kubinski, Manager New Product Commercialization Services, 3M Company "As the authors correctly point out, the Fuzzy Front End is the least expensive place to reduce cycle time. This book is one of the only sources of concepts, methods, and metrics for compressing this critical portion of the development process." David M. Lewis, Product Manager, Eastman Kodak Co. "Using these tools we've more than cut our time to market in half. The new edition of this classic crystallizes the synergy of the fast-to-market techniques, and the icons in the margins highlight the opportunities and pitfalls." Mike Brennan , Vice President of Product Development, Black & Decker
This is a treatise on management techniques, not process improvement. The first two chapters detail the decision of which projects to speed up, implying that a manager can only speed up a project by overstaffing it and clearing its path of the usual bureaucracy. Therefore, there is no permanent process gain to be had. But it is a great guide for decision makers looking to cut some time off any (or every) project. The fundamental tenets are these: 1) Make the decision to develop a new product idea quickly.
2) Staff all functions to the project immediately and keep them on throughout (no ramp-up, no handoffs)
3) Specify it simply and quickly and do not change the spec (3 days, 3 pages).
4) Spend a little time on the product architecture, designing for modularity and quick development.
5) User overlapping development techniques (work on multiple modules simultaneously)
6) Make a successful transition to manufacturing to complete the project.
You can halve the development time of most projects just by changing the way you manage your projects, without doing a lot of overtime or increasing the cost of development. Many of the answers are in this book. Again, this is a must read book for all development managers.
I found that this book was packed full of common sense, which is rare in a development management book. Although it has a lot of examples of manufacturing of phsyical goods, I found it great as a software manager. There aren't many spare words in this book, either -- it's terse and well edited, so you get the raw facts and the necessary stories to back them up, but not a lot (or any, really) fluff. I am putting it on my bookshelf for software engineers, right next to Writing Solid Code and Debugging the Development Process, two classics for software engineers and team leads, respectively.
Absolutely the best book there is on the subject of new product development. Of particular import is the discussion on market and pricing dynamics, which may be new to technical-types. Choosing the right product to develop is critical to avoid "The Innovators Dilemma". The book however needs to add more to the discussion of the importance (and risk) of rapid return of (partial) information to the team during the development cycle, as well as human (team) dynamics. I would therefore recommend "The Team Handbook" as a necessary adjunct.
While the first edition was a bit dry to read in the first four chapters, the second edition is more fun. The value of the content has not been reduced with rev 2.0, on the contrary. The book is full of sound business theory which is well explained and put into real life context to help the non-MBA to transfer the message to their respective challenges.
Also invaluable are the hints towards common pitfalls. They show that the authors have really applied the theory and are aware of the human factor in change processes.
I read rev 1.0 and 2.0 and will probably buy 3.0 as well. Keep going!
Product Details :
- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Wiley; 2 edition (October 10, 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0471292524
- ISBN-13: 978-0471292524
- Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 6.4 x 9.2 inches
More Details about Developing Products in Half the Time: New Rules, New Tools, 2nd Edition
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