The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

12.1. Introduction

Many managers approach rapid product development with unrealistic, distorted, or unclear objectives, so they are disappointed with the results they achieve. This chapter clarifies objectives, frames the capabilities and skills needed, and discusses pitfalls that have misled many managers in their search for development speed.

Time-to-market is such an alluring goal that providers of various techniques often list faster development as one of their technique's benefits. They are partially correct, but their technique may not speed up the aspect of development that you need. Also, many of the other chapters in this book provide the basic ingredients of rapid development, but they must be adapted in certain ways to provide significant improvements in speed. The goal of this chapter is to enable you to become a "smart shopper" for accelerated development techniques and to read the rest of this book with greater sensitivity to the time-saving potential of the tools it provides.