Quick Tips Index

product development articles

 

2008 2007 2006 2005
2004 2003 2002 2001
2000 1999 1998
unpublished articles

 

Best Practices

Whatever happened to best practices? April 2007

Cost of Delay

Are there situations where cost-of-delay calculations don’t apply? January 1999
Calculating the cost of delay December 1998

Fuzzy Front End

Why is listening to the customer so difficult? July 2008
What do you mean by market shifts when you speak of flexibility? January 2008
How can I develop products more flexibly by working with customers? March 2006
How can we come up with more/better new-product ideas? April 2004
Should we depend on Sales to keep our customers happy? January 2005
How can we accelerate decision making, particularly in the fuzzy front end? March 2003
How can we keep from being blindsided when world priorities shift? October 2001
How can I capture the voice of the customer? March 2001
How do I hear the voice of the customer as I develop a new product? October 2000
Should engineers be spending their precious time visiting customers? December 1999

Management Issues

Contemporary Management Methods Encourage Rigidity Article

Metrics

How can I tell if we did well at developing our last product? October 2003

Organizational Change

Is the CEO important to flexible product development? July 2007

Planning

How can I make our plans to improve product development “stick?” January 2001
How can we avoid “technology push” without avoiding technology? July 2000
What should my boss do to speed up product development? January 2000
How much does it cost to speed up product development? September 1999
Can we accelerate product development using a “Faster, Better, Cheaper” program? August 1999

Product Development Process

What is the most important factor in improving product development? October 2008
What are the keys to installing a new product development process? June 2005
Why do we have so much fire fighting, even when we manage our development process methodically? January 2002
Should we be using a stages-and-gates product development process? September 2001
Doesn’t rapid product development mean that quality will suffer? September 2000
How do I find truly valuable development process improvements? June 1999
Cycle Time Compression Can Be Inappropriate Article
New Product Development and Fast Cycle Time Article
Stage Gate* Process Versus Time to Market Article
Time to Market Improvement in Product Development Article

Flexible Product Development

Isn’t the iteration that accompanies flexible product development wasteful? June 2008
Is there a development process for flexible product development? April 2008
Does flexible product development complement or contradict lean product development? December 2007
Does flexible product development complement or contradict phased development processes? October 2007
What is the connection between flexible product development and time to market? June 2007
How can I make our product development process more flexible? March 2007
In general, how do I improve the flexibility of my product development? January 2007
How can we improve the flexibility of our product development process? August 2005
How is flexibility beneficial in developing new products? July 2005
How can we complete our design work if marketing keeps changing the requirements? December 2004
What can we do to “freeze” our product’s specifications? March 2004
Flexible Development Isn’t Free Article

Project Management

How can I make our project management more flexible? December 2006
Project Management: Often Misapplied to Product Development Article

Resources

What resources on the Internet do other product developers use? April 2001
Where can I read about new product development techniques? December 2000

Risk

How do I manage risk on a project that keeps changing? September 2008
What is the connection between flexible product development and project risk management? September 2007
How can I develop products more flexibly by changing our decision making? October 2006
How can we accelerate the risk management process for accelerated projects? May 2005
My boss frequently stalls on decisions. Is this fast time to market? October 2004
How are other companies doing at managing project risk? January 2004
What else can we do to facilitate talking about risk? June 2003
How can I manage my project’s risk when my boss won’t even discuss risk? April 2003
What are the biggest mistakes I can make in managing project risk? September 2002
How will improvements in managing project risk affect time to market? June 2002
Is project risk management a methodical process? April 2002
How do we understand, as a team, the risks that a project faces? March 2002
Is there anything to know about failure beyond not punishing those who fail? July 2001
I know that innovation is naturally chaotic, but can’t we anticipate problems better? June 2001
What are some day-to-day tools for dealing with project risk? April 2000
What is the essence of managing risk in a development project? October 1999
Project Risk Management: A Proactive Approach Article

Teams

What drives – or should drive – our product development? March 2008
How can I develop products more flexibly by strengthening teams? September 2006
Our team doesn’t get much done as a team. What can we do? July 2003
When co-locating our team isn’t practical, what can we do? January 2003
How can I break out of the e-mail vortex? December 2002
We call ourselves a team, but we don’t act like one. What can we do? October 2002
How can we get teams to use our product development process? July 2002
Haven’t virtual development teams superseded co-located ones? March 2000
What can I do to start dedicating people full-time to one project? April 1999
Why is it so destructive to split developers between projects? March 1999
How can our cross-functional team make decisions that stick? December 2001

Tools

How can I develop products more flexibly by exploiting set-based design? July 2006
How can I develop products more flexibly by exploiting experimentation? June 2006
How can I develop products more flexibly by exploiting product architecture? April 2006
Where do we start in reducing time to market? July 2004
How should we incorporate technology tools into our development process? December 2003
Do “rapid” prototypes really speed up product development? September 2003
How can we really benefit from rapid prototyping? June 2000

Trends

What is “green” product development? January 2006
What is lean product development? December 2005
How can we take advantage of globalization’s product development opportunities? October 2005
What if time-to-market doesn’t completely satisfy our objectives? March 2005
What is lean product development and should we be using it? September 2004
What major trends do your see in product development? June 2004
* Stage-Gate® is a registered trademark of the Product Development Institute Inc.

(c) Copyright 2013 Preston G. Smith. All Rights Reserved.

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