BUILD A HOUSE IN FOUR DAYS... THE TRUTH OF ACHIEVING FAST PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

For anybody working in design and development, it probably sounds like an insane schedule. I remember how it felt to work on projects in the past, even small and simple things took months to complete. Every form, every table, every feature was a struggle to push through the entire development process.

However, in today’s highly competitive Tech environment, those who are slow in bringing new products to market often lose out to those with a more agile development process? Developing products quickly while maintaining cost and quality demands a distinctive management approach that integrates marketing, engineering, development, manufacturing, and other activities.

One major hindrance to achieving this lies in the question, do we have an army of research, design and development team working day and night with inexhaustible resources? No.

The solution partly lies in agile development. Agile development has been around in the software production process for many years. It reimagines the conventional production flow for products, basing its methodology around frequent deliverables, cross-functional teams, and focused planning around strict timelines rather than strict specifications. In a grander context, Agile is a philosophy that can be applied to all aspects of production.

The pressure is on to accelerate product development partly because product life cycles are shrinking. If a product becomes obsolete sooner, it must be developed faster or it will become stale by the time it reaches the market. By exploiting management techniques that allow activities to start sooner and run concurrently with formerly sequential activities, a company can build a strategic advantage based on speed. This advantage pays off in product development because early product introduction can dramatically enhance market share and product margins while building the company’s image as an innovation leader.

FIRST, A FEW KEY QUESTIONS

1. But Does Speed Really Matter?

I guess you could question the value of fast development. Many do — poor implementation of Agile, after all, just leads to launching crap faster.

So, why all the hustle? Do we need to live under the constant pressure of deadlines and short sprints? Do we have to constantly rush? Can’t we just relax for once and plan a 6 month long release like in the old days?

In my experience fast product development, if correctly applied, becomes a competitive advantage in an ever changing market. And that itself is the answer

Thanks to fast, predictable and regular product development, your product mimics the nature of a constantly improving service. If your product has any shortcomings today, you can count that they will be fixed tomorrow. Though the price stays the same, the product grows and delivers better and better experience. Unlike your car, your application increases its value over time.

. . It requires constant re-adjustment to changes on the market. The gap between the desired state of your product and the current state is exactly where the speed plays the biggest role.

Okay Then, Consider Speed Against Cost

What of cost? Although a strong case exists for rapid product development, some concerns about the side effects of rushing the development process are valid. Speedy development can increase R&D expense and inflate product cost. It can also degrade product performance or quality. Managers make trade-off decisions among these variables daily, but often their decisions are made without good rules of thumb or a true appreciation of what is being given up in the trade.

THE ELEMENTS OF FAST PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

In a paper by Preston G. smith in New Product Dynamics. The following key elements where highlighted

1.Sensitivity to Time’s Value

Calculate and use the value of time to make daily trade-off decisions – Be sure that everyone, from the CEO to the shipping clerk, knows just why time-to-market is crucial and what one month of delay costs

Particularly watch for those large periods of time that slip away, as in the fuzzy front end of a project (before a team is formed)

2. A Product Structured for Rapid Development

Strive to introduce a rapid sequence of incrementally better products rather than the “ultimate product” – Write product specifications jointly to expose the key design trade-offs early. Design the product’s architecture for clean interfaces and independent modules rather than a global optimum laced with interactions

3. A Team Designed for Rapid Decision Making

Select a team leader who can make business and design decisions, and have him/her report directly to general management – Recruit a small, dedicated (full-time), multi-functional team of volunteers – Co-locate the team to enhance communication and commitment

4. Techniques to Compress Time

Religiously prune your project list so that new products don’t sit in queue waiting for resources. Companies should also develop the process for product delivery concurrently with the product development from day one. one important part of this is to seek opportunities to overlap activities by using partial information rather than waiting for a task to be completed before starting its successor

5. Streamlined Management Techniques

Expect the team to make all design decisions, reserving for management only change of scope, resource allocation, and project termination issues. Stress very frequent, informal peer reviews to monitor and control progress. Also manage both technical risk and market risk concurrently and actively, and continually remember that delay automatically raises market risk

6. A Well-Supported Transition to the New Mode

Start with a relatively small pilot project and provide it with everything needed to ensure the crucial initial success. Resist the temptation to rush every project, and develop a system to identify the projects that must be rushed and to treat them differently

LESSONS LEARNED THROUGH THE YEARS

In the past few years, Ive learned a few critical lessons on speeding up product development without sacrificing quality. These are:

Get a Talented team

Talented team = capability, energy and integrity

Putting together an exceptionally talented team is a necessity for fast cycle agile product development. Finding, hiring and retaining the right talent is a huge subject on its own, but my main thing is to pay attention to two aspects

1. Is your team energized by the work and development in the industry? Is work a passion, or just a job? The latter might be generally OK, but it’s not good enough for a company that needs to grow fast. Tesla’s story shares this… look it up
2. What is the main motivation to change a job? If it’s purely financial, it might be great for opportunities, but it’s definitely not good enough.

Companies used to time line based agile product development stress the team and without the right motivation, they might crack. Companies must therefore hire people who are not only passionate about the opportunity to work for the company, but are self-motivated.

2. Standardize your process before scaling

As companies grow, the need to build infrastructure around growing teams becomes important. When I say infrastructure I don’t mean complicated systems and technology. Infrastructure for a team is simply put, the right processes.

Many companies are afraid to suffocate their team’s power with processes so instead, they start adding to the team. That is a mistake. You need a stronger engine before you can just add more power.

As you might imagine, the result of this is usually the exact opposite of what is hoped. As team size increases, projects can slow down. While a small company can rely on natural interactions and team work, bigger teams fall into chaos without proper structure. Failure to recognize this simple fact, can cost a couple of months of fast product development.

Hire an experienced Manager. 

The value of a good manager cannot be over emphasized. But what makes a good manager? The kind that inspires a team, fosters growth and productivity, and frequently asks for feedback on their management style. however the value of experience provided the basis for decision and preferences as situation requires

3. Streamlined design and development collaboration

The final step in fast product development is getting right the design and development collaboration. Stay focused on two goals:

Build the right things for users- become very much disciplined about building fast, test regularly with consumers. If you’re spending days crafting a “fidelity prototype” you’re wasting time you could spend learning from your customers. You’ll fall in love with your first concept and suffer from confirmation bias.

Equip designers and developers to build efficiently together. Honestly I don’t know all the details to getting this done efficiently. But I know it is important. It does seem to be a combination of proper management and good working environment but I’ll leave this to your contribution. What do you think?