PLM Library · Article
The New New Product Development Game
- Author
- Hirotaka Takeuchi, Ikujiro Nonaka
- Publisher
- Harvard Business Review, January 1986
- Year
- 1986
Summary
The classic Harvard Business Review article that compared fast, flexible product development to rugby: a self-organizing, cross-functional team moving the ball down the field together, rather than passing it relay-style between departments.
Based on studies of Japanese and American companies, it identifies the characteristics of this approach — built-in instability, self-organizing project teams, overlapping development phases, multilearning, subtle control and organizational transfer of learning — and contrasts them with the traditional sequential model.
Our verdict
Recommended reading. Short and influential: the article that gave agile development its 'scrum' metaphor and still explains why overlapping, empowered teams outrun sequential development.
Who should read it
- —Anyone interested in the origins of agile and scrum in hardware product development
- —Development leaders comparing sequential and overlapping development approaches
How it relates to your work
- —Explains the team and phase-overlap model that concurrent engineering and modern agile methods build on.
- —Useful historical anchor when discussing why cross-functional integration matters for development speed.
Keep in mind
- —A 1986 article with dated company examples; the ideas, not the cases, are the value.
- —Harvard Business Review articles sit behind a paywall with limited free access.