Speed up your development process with Agile Product Development! In the mid 80’s two seemingly contradictory business processes for new product development have been promoted.

In the phased approach⁴ , the whole development process is separated in 5 to 10 distinct phases with decision control points in between. After each phase a check on the respective deliverables is performed and the next phase will only start on successful completion of the preceding phase.

In the agile approach⁵, an iterative process with emphasis on team strength and self-organization is followed. A High power team will use a highly overlapping process to create a product from often fuzzy customer requirements. Many highly successful products were developed in the last two decades, using this methodology.

In the meantime, mainly after 2001⁶, „Agile“ became the de-facto approach in software engineering in more and more domains. Agile methods⁷ generally promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability, a set of engineering best practices that allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals.

For New Product Development involving not only software, but also hardware there is no best approach, which will fit all enterprises. It will much depend on the market requirements, corporate culture and the regulatory requirements.

Engineering-Consult will help to define the optimized development process for your company to achieve superior results.

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⁴R.G. Cooper, “Winning on New Products”, Kogan Page, 1988
⁵H. Takeeuchi, I. Nonaka; „The New Product Development Game“; Harvard Business Review 1986
⁶Wikipedia; Agile Manifesto
⁷Wikipedia; Agile Software Development

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