Developing Products in Half the Time: New Rules, New Tools, 2nd Edition (Hardcover)

by Preston G. Smith (Author), Donald G. Reinertsen (Author) "When the first edition of this book appeared in 1991, many companies were aspiring to cut their product development times in half, but only a..." (more)
Key Phrases: rapid development teams, system integration risk, rapid development project, Fuzzy Front End, New York, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Advance praise for Developing Products in Half the Time Second Edition New Rules, New Tools Preston G. Smith • Donald G. Reinertsen "This is an exceptional book! Get a new highlighter before you start. There are so many ‘ah ha’s’ in each chapter you will never make it through with an old one." Don LaCombe, Ford Motor Company, Product Development Process Leadership "An excellent book with a strong treatment of the cycle-time consequences of overloading your development capacity. It provides powerful and practical concepts for dealing with this issue." Andrew Aquart, Director Product Development, Cordis, a Johnson & Johnson Company "This is practical, useful stuff for people competing in highly competitive fast moving business." Dr. Paul Borrill, Chief Scientist, Sun Microsystems "3M has absorbed many of the tools from the original edition, and this new one will be even more useful. The topic of incremental innovation is crucial to us, and I really appreciate its balanced treatment." Ronald H. Kubinski, Manager New Product Commercialization Services, 3M Company "As the authors correctly point out, the Fuzzy Front End is the least expensive place to reduce cycle time. This book is one of the only sources of concepts, methods, and metrics for compressing this critical portion of the development process." David M. Lewis, Product Manager, Eastman Kodak Co. "Using these tools we’ve more than cut our time to market in half. The new edition of this classic crystallizes the synergy of the fast-to-market techniques, and the icons in the margins highlight the opportunities and pitfalls." Mike Brennan , Vice President of Product Development, Black & Decker

From the Inside Flap
Developing Products in Half the Time Second Edition New Rules, New Tools Preston G. Smith • Donald G. Reinertsen In this era of global competition and accelerating product life cycles, the need to get new products to market faster is more compelling than ever. What was once considered fast development is now commonplace. In 1991, the original edition of this book became an instant hit as the leading guide to reducing product development cycle time. The expanded set of tools in this new edition meets the needs of today’s more demanding times. The book’s premise remains solid: time is worth money, and if you quantify this value you can buy time wisely, often to enormous advantage. Rather than pursuing development speed at any price, the authors emphasize subjecting time-to-market decisions to the same hard-nosed business logic used for other management decisions. Developing Products is unique in providing tools for trading off schedule against other business objectives. It integrates powerful methods to manage risk and use resources effectively with proven techniques to accelerate product development. Smith and Reinertsen discuss hundreds of practical tools for reducing cycle time, describing each one’s application and limitations. Countless examples including Black & Decker, Hewlett-Packard, Honda, Motorola, and others illustrate how real companies use the tools. With six more years of implementation experience and responses from readers of the original 60,000 copies, the authors have sharpened the original tools and added new ones. New topics include:

• Advanced tools for calculating the cost of delay
• A process for shortening the Fuzzy Front End
• Alternatives to co-locating a team
• How to effectively involve customers in developing product specifications
• The role of advanced technology tools in r apid development
• Metrics for projects and processes
• New methods for managing risk
• How to continuously learn from your development projects

The strategies in Developing Products in Half the Time apply to all companies and industries including software and electronics, medical devices, machinery and vehicles, and consumer goods. The authors show how leading companies no longer depend on only a few isolated tools but now integrate a broad array of methods to gain synergy and greater competitive advantage. This is the guide you will need in the trenches if time to market is important to you—or if you are wondering if it should be. It will be equally valuable to new readers and to those who must move beyond the original edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 2 edition (October 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471292524
• ISBN-13: 978-0471292524
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #149,679 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a must-read book for all development managers, December 9, 1998

By A Customer

This is a treatise on management techniques, not process improvement. The first two chapters detail the decision of which projects to speed up, implying that a manager can only speed up a project by overstaffing it and clearing its path of the usual bureaucracy. Therefore, there is no permanent process gain to be had. But it is a great guide for decision makers looking to cut some time off any (or every) project. The fundamental tenets are these:

1) Make the decision to develop a new product idea quickly.

2) Staff all functions to the project immediately and keep them on throughout (no ramp-up, no handoffs)

3) Specify it simply and quickly and do not change the spec (3 days, 3 pages).

4) Spend a little time on the product architecture, designing for modularity and quick development.

5) User overlapping development techniques (work on multiple modules simultaneously)

6) Make a successful transition to manufacturing to complete the project.

You can halve the development time of most projects just by changing the way you manage your projects, without doing a lot of overtime or increasing the cost of development. Many of the answers are in this book. Again, this is a must read book for all development managers.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent must-read for senior managers, January 4, 2002

By	Photo Hobbyist (Portola Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I found that this book was packed full of common sense, which is rare in a development management book. Although it has a lot of examples of manufacturing of phsyical goods, I found it great as a software manager. There aren't many spare words in this book, either -- it's terse and well edited, so you get the raw facts and the necessary stories to back them up, but not a lot (or any, really) fluff.

I am putting it on my bookshelf for software engineers, right next to Writing Solid Code and Debugging the Development Process, two classics for software engineers and team leads, respectively.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars very sophisticated tools for real life product development, September 5, 2000

By	mj405 "mj405" (Germany) - See all my reviews

While the first edition was a bit dry to read in the first four chapters, the second edition is more fun. The value of the content has not been reduced with rev 2.0, on the contrary.

The book is full of sound business theory which is well explained and put into real life context to help the non-MBA to transfer the message to their respective challenges.

Also invaluable are the hints towards common pitfalls. They show that the authors have really applied the theory and are aware of the human factor in change processes.

I read rev 1.0 and 2.0 and will probably buy 3.0 as well.

Keep going!