Six Myths of Product Development
- Author
- Stefan Thomke, Donald G. Reinertsen
- Publisher
- Harvard Business Review, May 2012
- Year
- 2012
Summary
The article challenges six common assumptions about product development: that high resource utilization improves performance, that processing work in large batches is efficient, that development plans should be followed strictly, that work should start as early as possible, that more features are always better, and that projects succeed when teams are fully loaded.
Drawing on queueing theory and lean product development, it explains why these practices — sensible in manufacturing — backfire in development work, and what to do instead: manage capacity utilization below maximum, reduce batch sizes, use fast feedback and treat plans as hypotheses.
Our verdict
Recommended reading. A short, accessible summary of Reinertsen's flow economics — the fastest way to understand why overloaded development organizations are slow, and a good article to hand to skeptical managers.
Who should read it
- —Engineering managers and executives questioning why development is always late
- —Anyone who found Reinertsen's book too dense and wants the core ideas in ten pages
How it relates to your work
- —Directly applicable to engineering change processing, review queues and resource planning.
- —Provides management-friendly arguments for limiting work in process and realistic loading of development teams.
Keep in mind
- —A summary article; for the full economic treatment, read Reinertsen's book.
- —Harvard Business Review articles sit behind a paywall with limited free access.