Desatoya LLC             Product Development Section

How to optimize product development (time to market and cost):

• Appoint a passionate team leader with a vision and an understanding of the product. Proper motivation and appropriate skills of the team and it’s leader are vital for success.

• Provide strong support to the team (more money/budget is often not helpful, strong mentoring support can be important)

• Apply sound project management principles (see critical chain project management below), consider an “agile” development approach not only for software. Beware of fake “agile” processes
• Solve process problems by addressing the root causes and not by adding another layer of management oversight
• Use quantitative data for subsystem and system characterization and apply sound statistical analysis methods

• Avoid changing priorities/direction during the development effort (if not dictated by substantial market changes), and have a clear ranking by importance for the programs of multiple teams.

• Support intensive system testing early in the development

• Include customer applications in testing; test early and realistically (subsystems and system); get as much real usage as possible, as early as possible; reward project engineers and testers for "bad news". All this will reduce the likelihood of negative product/company impressions after launch e.g. the Boeing 787 airplane publicity.

Recommended links:

Project Management Course    (to be added)

Statistical process control basics   http://www.statit.com/statitcustomqc/StatitCustomQC_Overview.pdf

Stevens Institute of Technology's Modified Tech Stage Gate Process    http://www.stevens.edu/cce/NEW/PDFs/TechStageGate.pdf

Program manager role  http://www.product-arts.com/articlelink/1375-the-development-program-manager-role

Critical Path and Critical Chain Project Management   (to be added)

Importance of Domain Knowledge      jacquesmattheij.com/domain-knowledge-or-a-lack-thereof

Agile Development    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)

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