Customer Reviews

The Lean Product Development Guidebook: Everything Your Design Team Needs to Improve Efficiency and Slash Time to Market

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Project management professional Ronald Mascitelli presents The Lean Product Development Guidebook: Everything Your Design Team Needs to Improve Efficiency and Slash Time-to-Market, a handbook written especially for design team managers in all business fields. The focus lies upon making the product development process "lean", thereby improving both its efficiency and its effectiveness. Chapters describe how to establish product design requirements, heighten the pace of project execution, and apply self-assessment tools to keep design paradigms operating at optimal levels. The Lean Product Development Guidebook is spiral-bound, able to lay flat or be folded over on itself for easy reference, and is written in plain terms, with numerous black-and-white charts and diagrams illustrating its principles. Enthusiastically recommended as an overview resource and guideline for design team managers everywhere.

Ron has a very laid back writing style. You can tell that he has spent a considerable amount of time in the trenches and appreciates the amount of hard work and focus it takes for a successfull product development project. I would definately recomend this book for anyone serious about wanting to add tools to their product development toolbox.

This is the author's second book on product development. The first one was focused primarily on cost reduction with some material about time-to-market. In this book his focus is primarily on reducing development time through focusing on the new development team processes. Ron offers some very practical advice, and a host of easy to use tools and aids that new product development teams can adapt very easily and quickly. Ron's writing style is that of a practitioner and therefore makes reading the material easy, and is made relevant to a real world environment.

His approach of adapting some traditional lean tools to the product development situation is novel. I found his version of Value Stream Mapping for example, for a basically creative process, very useful.

While this book stands on its own, if you have not read Ron's first book "The Lean Design Guidebook," doing so would give you holistic perspective on both the time and cost factors involved in the new product design process.

This book doesn't just include a bunch of "Lean" buzzwords and fluff. Instead, it includes practical analysis and steps that you can take to improve efficiency in the real world. It has an excellent section on project selection, sources of waste, and a significant number of real-world steps that can make a difference. I've read a few books on Lean product development and this one was by far the most useful and practical. Highly recommended.

About a year ago we had a consulting firm come in and evaluate our engg department. They identified several areas where we needed improvement. Frankly, I wasn't sure where to start or what to do as I've been isolated the last 18 years with one company. I looked for some books to read and picked this one up several months ago. Many useful and practical ideas, and I've started implementing some of them. Our department is in the middle of an improvement process and I keep referring back to the book, re-reading parts. It has been a great help. What has made it so good is there is almost no theory. Just good, practical, common sense advice.

I'm a third through this book and I can see already that it will be a big help to our product development process. Of 4-5 books I purchased on the topic, this one appears to be the most useful so far.

I just finished reading "The Lean Product Development Guidebook" and I am totally impressed with the practical tools and common sense tone of this book. The author makes the learning experience pleasant and even entertaining! Most of the two dozen "lean methods" described in the book can be used right away and will provide immediate benfits. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about driving waste out of the product design process.