Donald G Reinertsen - The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development

If you are implementing lean or iterative product development, this will be the most often referenced volume on your bookshelf. (Mine has quickly become more dog-eared than Managing the Design Factory .) Unlike some other popular books, this work doesnt stop with the high-level theory; it provides explicit, real-life examples showing how to achieve it. It has guided my efforts to instill a lean philosophy in our NPD group, and the methods have already provided significant improvements to our decision-making and ultimately our throughput.

Tim Spang, Executive Director, Radiology NPD, MEDRAD, Inc.

At Accuer, our business depends on helping successful product developers become even better. We need to provide real results, quickly, in lots of different areas. Because we need to stay at the leading edge, Ive studied and read almost every book on lean product development; this one is better than the rest of them combined! Why? Its a unique combination of practical methods and clear explanations of the science that makes them work. If youve enjoyed Dons previous books as much as I have, youre guaranteed to like this one.

David Paulson, President, Accuer, Inc.

The principles described in this book are relevant to every product developer and, perhaps most importantly, to every product development executive. Rather than giving dogmatic rules, Reinertsen provides insightful and pragmatic principles that can be tailored to the economic factors unique to each enterprise. These principles will improve your everyday decision-making. This book is a worthy follow-on to Managing the Design Factory and belongs on every product managers bookshelf.

Glenn Paulley, Director of Engineering, Sybase iAnywhere

Biotechnology process development is a relatively new field, and key issues such as variability, biological system complexity, balance between process robustness and time-to-market still remain challenging. Dons new book offers insightful new concepts that can be of paramount practical importance to the biotechnology professional.

Konstantin Konstantinov, VP Technology Development, Genzyme Corp.

This book provides a banquet table of techniques for advancing the effectiveness and efficiency of product development management. Weve already used some of the small batch methods, with strong results, in software development. Now we are starting to expand them into firmware and hardware development. Dons book makes it easy to sort out and think through the specific steps needed to improve product development economics.

Paul C Aspinwall, IPD Process Architect, IBM

The tools in this book go further than anything Ive seen in my 15 years of trying to improve product development. They will change the way you think about the problem. Instead of spending time and energy trying to remove variability, you will learn to use it to your advantage. Youll get both a deep theoretical understanding and the practical tools needed to make real changes.

Mikael Lundgren, Citerus AB

Reinertsen continues to stay ahead of the game on how lean applies in new product and process development. The book is highly readable and easily searchable, being organized into clear bite-sized chunks which each cover an important concept in a way that readers can grasp and apply to their project management challenges.

Bernard North, Chief Engineer, Kennametal Inc.

This is by far the best book I have read about the product development flow. It articulates many of the principles that we intuitively applied at Nokia throughout the exponential growth period of the 90s. It combines practical ideas for beginners and deep insights for the most experienced manager.

Ahti Visnen, former VP of R&D and head of 3G at Nokia Mobile Phones

Whereas most books on lean product development are mere translations of lean manufacturing practices, this book avoids both dogma and jargon. Instead, it provides practical, economically-grounded thinking tools that can improve decision making in the modern design world. Theres more immediately useful information packed into this one volume than in dozens of other lean books put together; my copy is almost completely highlighted. The discussion on Cost of Delay alone is worth the price. This is a MUST READ if you are serious about implementing lean product development!

Jay Packlick, Agile Development Coach, Sabre Airline Solutions

When were ready, this book has a tremendous amount to teach all of us. Its not a beginners guide, and it doesnt hold your hand. Instead, it tackles the hard questions head-on. Ive read it and re-read it. Its quite simply the most advanced product development book you can buy.

Eric Ries, Entrepreneur, Author of The Lean Startup

CELERITAS PUBLISHING
Redondo Beach, California

Celeritas Publishing

Redondo Beach, CA 90277

www.CeleritasPublishing.com

Copyright 2009 by Donald G. Reinertsen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by information storage and retrieval systems, without the written permission of the publisher.

For information on discounts for bulk purchases, contact Celeritas Publishing at:

Hardcover Edition Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008911906

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reinertsen, Donald G., 1950

The principles of product development flow: second generation lean product development/

Donald G. Reinertsen

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-935401-00-1

Kindle ISBN-13: 978-1-935401-01-8

ePub ISBN-13: 978-1-935401-02-5

1. New products. 2. Product management. I. Title.

Dedicated to my mother and my father

MARY VIKTORIN REINERTSEN

LEIF CHRISTIAN REINERTSEN

It aint what you dont know that gets you into trouble. Its what you know for sure that just aint so. Mark Twain

Why write this book? After about 30 years of advising product development organizations, Ive been lucky enough to work with many smart and experienced developers. Ive had a chance to see what they do, and what outcomes they get. At the same time, Ive been exposed to all the standard advice about how product development should be managed. Curiously, what actually works is surprisingly different from the standard advice. Why?

I believe that the dominant paradigm for managing product development is fundamentally wrong. Not just a little wrong, but wrong to its very core. It is as wrong as we were in manufacturing, before the Japanese unlocked the secret of lean manufacturing. I believe that a new paradigm is emerging, one that challenges the current orthodoxy of product development. I want to help accelerate the adoption of this new approach. I believe I can do this by helping people understand it. That is the purpose of this book.

The approach I will describe has always been present in some form in development processes. After all, product developers repeat behaviors that work, even if, in theory, they are not supposed to work. But discovering and repeating successful behaviors is not enough to create large-scale use. Product developers need to extract the underlying mechanisms of action that make these methods work. It is only by generalizing these principles that we can expand their application from a handful of isolated successes into a general approach that transforms the entire development process.

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