David Paulson has over 20 years of product development experience and still remembers his first day at work. That’s when he found out how inefficient the product development process was. He’s been working to fix that ever since. David and his partners at Accuer have developed a set of solutions that enable their customers to consistently cut development times by half while delivering more successful products – faster time to market with better products.

 

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators

Highlights from the discussion include:

• Apply Lean product development to cut time to market in half and create successful products – something all innovators want to know how to accomplish!
• Lean has many different definitions, but in the product development context, it has three specific characteristics: (1) focus on value to the customer, (2) rapidly learn, and (3) maximize desired results while minimizing effort.
• In addition to the benefits of creating more profitable products, applying Lean product development also impacts the organizational culture, resulting in happier and more effective employees.
• Lean is related to Agile development as both are trying to get the right product to customers more quickly.
• Compared to phase-gate type of development approaches, Lean works in smaller chunks to increase efficiency and reduce waste.
• First time David applied Lean product development to a project, the time-to-market decreased from the expected 30 months to 12 months, finished 20% under budget, and generated an additional $3 million profit by being early to market.
• Good books on the topic of Lean product development are from Don Reinersten, including “Managing the Design Factory” and “The Principles of Product Development Flow.” Read “Managing the Design Factory” first.

Find out more about the Lean process, tools, and software to cut time-to-market and increase profits at David’s website, PLAYBOOK.

Innovation Quote

“If you do what everyone else does, you will get what everyone else gets.”  – Stephen Richards

 

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Thanks for Listening!

Thank you for joining me again. I love discussing product development and learning from the successes and failures of product innovators. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager, developer, or innovator by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.