Customer Reviews

Setting the PACE in Product Development: A Guide to Product and Cycle-time Excellence

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

My company decided to adopt PACE, and plopped this book down in front of all the engineers. It caused more chaos than we had when we started. The book describes several teams, but neglects to describe how to select the team members, how to get them to be effective in their jobs, or even what there exact team responsibilities might be, other than to do "in depth analysis". Fine, but what does *that* mean. Oh, you're supposed to hire the authors to come in and consult with your company and develop another document that describes this. Sorry, this is a non-starter.

I think this is THE book on Software Project and Product Management. In-depth coverage of the Core Team approach and explanation of why Core Team is better than other current development methods such as functional or cross-functional teams. This is a great reference book, one every manager should have on his desk. Only thing I didn't like was this new version is paper-back, I liked the hard-backs for books I intend to keep and use. Excellent book !

This guide can be very misleading for those working in the software development world.

Apply this method to Software Engineering, and you are revisiting the old Waterfall Method of software development. In today's E-commerce and e-Enterprise worlds, this is not a good place to visit for long. I would only recommend this to folks developing products in a manufacturing environment.

However, Phase 0 Reviews could be a very useful tool on an executive level as a Project Methodology for initiating and prioritizing software development projects and ensuring a product's overall strategic fit while allocating development resources.

This book is good from a historical perspective but is quite dated, all of the examples are from the early 90's. Even the authors at PRTM are not selling PACE as the latest thinking. The Cooper book on Product Leadership is a good overview of stage gates, and The Toyota Product Development System provides a more holistic view of product development, covering culture.

If you've ever wondered why some companies seem to be able to get products out the door reliably and others end up having constant battles between sales, marketing and engineering, this book will help clarify the situation. Not only is building great product on time and on schedule possible, it's a repeatable process. Even if you don't buy into the entire process of PACE (Product And Cycle-Time Excellence) you can still benefit from some of the concepts around a core team to encourage better communications at each stage of development.

In the last few years I must have read around 30 or more books on Product Development (OK!!! to keep track of what is going on is part of my job! :), from old authors from the 70's (Jones) to more recent books. In my opnion, "Setting Pace.." is very clear, very consistent, and provides a VERY good understanding of the nature of Product Develoment in industrial, manufacturing oriented businesses. Nevertheless, I don't know whether or not this book is good for software development. From the reviews bellow, it appears not to be the case.

In any case, and if your business is not software, it is a MUST READ to any Manager or Director involved with the in NPD. Just don't expect the book (or worse, external consultants) to do YOUR job of improving YOUR PD process for you. It doesn't exist! Furthermore, one book does not bring all of the solutions. Look around. Read other books. Talk to people. Visit other companies. See how they are doing! Make your mind BEFORE engaging in a PD reengineering project.

Claudiano, Ph.D....

I think the best word I can use to describe this book is vacuous. While I think they have done a fair job of enumerating some of the problems inherent in the Product Development Process, the tome is devoid of any way to fix the problem. Simply waving ones arms and saying telling us to use a process with a set of high-level titles isn't very helpful. I also thought it was very courageous of the authors to use Apple Computer to demonstrate that a company is more succesful because it was first to market. I agree with "Reader from Silicon Valley" - this book was clearly designed to generate consulting dollars for the authors since there is no way one could figure out the solution from its contents. We in the Software Industry could really benefit from a more Engineering-Based approach to the software development process. Sadly, I do not think this is it.

This is nothing more than a rehashing of some very old concepts cleverly disguised(or so the author thinks) in a bunch of vague terminology. As a book it lacks substance. As an ad for the author's consulting service it doesn't offer enough too make anyone, with any knowledge or experience in this area, want to hire them. But if you are easily impressed by high-sounding terms and promises of speed to market and lots of savings, etc...then this book and many others like it, is for you. If you're looking for a real solution for designing better products, faster - look elsewhere.

This book is THE manual for running rapid product development teams, written in a very easy to read, approachable format. The framework of the core team and review stages are incredibly insightful yet still tremendously pragmatic for any organization needing to maximize its development dollar and new product flow.

If you were to go back to the '70's with dictatorial management that reviewed everything - then you would find this world in the prescription of the book. He also supports bloated Project, Program and Product Manager systems. You know the ones - no one responsible, beautiful charts that can not seem to indicate product creep and slide, Engineers in multiple daily meetings so they can not engineer. The world in which many of you live or are going to.
The last chapter or two, tells you the pitfalls that may be your eventual fate. You will most definitely need his PDM Software and probably his consultants if you adopt this tact. To think he quotes people and stories he knows nothing about - and he gets it wrong, both in his report and understanding.