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title: "The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development"
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# The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development

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The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development [Reinertsen, Donald G.] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development

Review: Reviewing as I read along, love it so far - I got this book on 2014/06/17 and I've read into Chapter 3. Chapter 1 is somewhat different from the other chapters in that rather than being a series of principles, it provides an overall view of practice orthodoxy and how many of these closely held beliefs are based on secondary or proxy variables. The chapter continues with an overview of several examples and then summarizes and discusses where things are going in the rest of the book as well as the layout. The first chapter is great. I did expect it to end a bit sooner than it did (I was thinking in terms of self-referential, small batch sizes), but I'm not sure a shorter chapter would have been better. The second chapter introduces the approach for the rest of the book as well as the model underpinning the principles. The approach works for me. I imagine myself reading this book, going back and creating queue cards for each of the principles, then periodically looking up individual ones and refreshing my memory. It seems like a book I can keep going back to and reading just because I want 5 minutes of good reading. For some context, I'm a software developer. I learned about the Theory of Constraints (ToC) before I really learned software development processes in depth. When I did being the software process journey, it was under the OO umbrella, so incremental and iterative, feedback, etc. This learning, however, I've recently realized (by first reading Kanban and now this book) was heavily influenced by the ToC. At the beginning of this century, I jumped on the XP and Scrum bandwagons, even working with a few of the original signatories on the manifesto for agile development. ToC came up a number of times while coaching. Moving from ToC to thinking in terms of Kanban isn't much of a leap to me. However, since I was applying things I learned and internalized, things that seem obvious to me are often not obvious to my customers or even my colleagues (yes, sometimes I'm wrong, but often I'm not). For example, at many, many places I've been, companies claim they are practicing continuous integration or even continuous delivery, but then their builds are broken (red) 80+ % of the time. This is a huge cost to productivity, morale, feedback, etc. This is one example of many such examples that, in in the context of ToC are obvious bottlenecks, which cause queueing. If I look with lean glasses, many of these are worthy of stopping the line, but people march on, building up queues of work to be committed, which lead to more broken builds, integration problems, demoralization, etc. However, what seems obvious to me doesn't seem obvious to others. More importantly, many people don't even see that there's a problem at all! They think, for example, when developers complain about being blocked due to the build being broken, it's just developers complaining about a minor glitch, but it is more typically a systemic problem. This books presents a model based on economics. One thing that I observed myself observing about the book was that I thought it might be over emphasizing one dimension, cost of delay, or one approach, economics. However, "all models are wrong, some are valuable." While I had this observation, I didn't find anything wrong about the conclusions, and in fact find my self thinking "yes and," so I've kept reading. So while this model may be wrong in some ways (I'm not aware of any), I clearly see immediate and near-term value for me with its use. What this model does is allow me to speak to upper management, and maybe middle management using a language they are likely to appreciate. I'm able to justify things like slack using economic models, so that I might be better able to communicate with them. So rather than talking about the flexibility and agility that well under 100% utilization might offer, instead I can discuss the cost of delivery related to high utilization (lack of slack). My primary failing up until now is not being able to explain what seems intuitive to me in a way that bridges the communication gap. This model seems to give me another way to both think about it and communicate it. I have not finished reading the book, but in the the spirit of small batch sizes, this is my first delivery. I'll be making updates as I read the book. I am already confident that I'll finish this book and that I can recommend it to people. It'll have to really work hard to go under a 5 star review. Finally (so far): my impression so far reading the book is that it seems well researched, brings together a number of disciplines in a non-trivial manner and seems to come form someone who legitimately has many good years of experience, not just the same 1 year of experience repeated over and over.
Review: Audacious and Pathbreaking - Donald Reinertsen's latest book on new product development aspires to making a global and historical impact. He systematically applies the theory and best practices of lean manufacturing, economics, queuing theory, statistics, web communications, operating systems, control engineering and military science to the new product development process. He summarizes these insights in 8 themes and 175 principles. Examples and graphs illustrate the concepts. This is a dense book. The target audience of marketing MBA's, industrial engineers, project and general managers will be challenged. It requires some familiarity with lean manufacturing, economics and operations research. The principles are illustrated but not obvious. The quality, lean manufacturing, Toyota Production System, theory of constraints and technical sources are briefly referenced. The rationale for existing (stage-gate) best practices is not explained. Limits and trade-offs are not discussed. Nonetheless, this is an audacious and path breaking book. Product development practitioners can learn and apply the principles of this book. Economics trumps simple versions of quality paradigms. Expected net lifetime value is king. Marginal cost/benefit analysis rules. Global optimums outweigh local ones. Proxy measures undermine optimal economic decision-making. Decisions matter, precision does not. Priority features/competitive advantages matter most. Economic rules of thumb allow decentralized decisions. Cost of delay is managed through an explicit value of time. Queuing theory manages delays. Project and task cycle times drive the cost of delay. Long queues increase defects, variability and risks. Misplaced high efficiency and utilization goals lead to delays, increased costs and disastrous momentum. Communications links between adjacent processes matter more than bottleneck capacity. Simple views that delays, variability, inventory or waste are evil or have infinite cost lead to bad decisions. Queues are everywhere in product development. Measure variability with a payoff function. It can be negative or positive. Testing generates information value. Statistics based steps reduce variation, such as smaller tasks and time horizons. Counterbalance and design reuse offset variability. Economic priorities, faster iterations and early high risk actions minimize the impact of variability. Smaller task batch sizes reduce variability and cycle time, accelerate feedback, improve engagement and reduce risk and overhead. Large batches increase costs, delay progress and may spin out of control. Optimum batch sizes are small and can be found through trial and error. Combine features in separately developed and tested modules. Smaller batches are more beneficial than capacity increases. Large batches impact every step of product development. Detailed planning and control of tasks is costly. It is more effective to control the work in process between major functions. As with TPS or Theory of Constraints, managing the flow of released product from stage to stage improves final results. Many scheduling, prioritization, resource and recovery strategies can minimize task WIP. A blended generalist/specialist staff skills profile offers flexible capacity. The flow of activities through product development can be managed. Use forecasts and share information between adjacent stages. Use cadence to set routine start/stop times. Synchronize tasks so that dependent events flow smoothly. Sequence tasks and change priorities based upon risk and incremental economic value added. Build in flexible paths and spare resources. Develop rapid feedback systems. Employ early warning systems and value at risk triggers to escalate reviews. Align activities through training, incentives and templates. Adjust decisively when required. Use frequent communication to build teams and short queues to build urgency. Employ flow metrics. Decentralize decision making to speed the flow and avoid management bottlenecks. Provide high level structure in the form of rough-cut plans, rules of thumb, intentions, templates and sequences. The principles in this book can be applied to any operations or development process. The value added is limited only by the time invested.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #221,584 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #33 in Product Management #39 in Industrial Management & Leadership #1,356 in Business Management (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars (506) |
| Dimensions  | 6.25 x 1.25 x 9 inches |
| Edition  | 1st |
| ISBN-10  | 1935401009 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-1935401001 |
| Item Weight  | 1.4 pounds |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 304 pages |
| Publication date  | January 1, 2009 |
| Publisher  | Celeritas Pub |

## Images

![The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91sh+QdzfCL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reviewing as I read along, love it so far
*by B***T on June 18, 2014*

I got this book on 2014/06/17 and I've read into Chapter 3. Chapter 1 is somewhat different from the other chapters in that rather than being a series of principles, it provides an overall view of practice orthodoxy and how many of these closely held beliefs are based on secondary or proxy variables. The chapter continues with an overview of several examples and then summarizes and discusses where things are going in the rest of the book as well as the layout. The first chapter is great. I did expect it to end a bit sooner than it did (I was thinking in terms of self-referential, small batch sizes), but I'm not sure a shorter chapter would have been better. The second chapter introduces the approach for the rest of the book as well as the model underpinning the principles. The approach works for me. I imagine myself reading this book, going back and creating queue cards for each of the principles, then periodically looking up individual ones and refreshing my memory. It seems like a book I can keep going back to and reading just because I want 5 minutes of good reading. For some context, I'm a software developer. I learned about the Theory of Constraints (ToC) before I really learned software development processes in depth. When I did being the software process journey, it was under the OO umbrella, so incremental and iterative, feedback, etc. This learning, however, I've recently realized (by first reading Kanban and now this book) was heavily influenced by the ToC. At the beginning of this century, I jumped on the XP and Scrum bandwagons, even working with a few of the original signatories on the manifesto for agile development. ToC came up a number of times while coaching. Moving from ToC to thinking in terms of Kanban isn't much of a leap to me. However, since I was applying things I learned and internalized, things that seem obvious to me are often not obvious to my customers or even my colleagues (yes, sometimes I'm wrong, but often I'm not). For example, at many, many places I've been, companies claim they are practicing continuous integration or even continuous delivery, but then their builds are broken (red) 80+ % of the time. This is a huge cost to productivity, morale, feedback, etc. This is one example of many such examples that, in in the context of ToC are obvious bottlenecks, which cause queueing. If I look with lean glasses, many of these are worthy of stopping the line, but people march on, building up queues of work to be committed, which lead to more broken builds, integration problems, demoralization, etc. However, what seems obvious to me doesn't seem obvious to others. More importantly, many people don't even see that there's a problem at all! They think, for example, when developers complain about being blocked due to the build being broken, it's just developers complaining about a minor glitch, but it is more typically a systemic problem. This books presents a model based on economics. One thing that I observed myself observing about the book was that I thought it might be over emphasizing one dimension, cost of delay, or one approach, economics. However, "all models are wrong, some are valuable." While I had this observation, I didn't find anything wrong about the conclusions, and in fact find my self thinking "yes and," so I've kept reading. So while this model may be wrong in some ways (I'm not aware of any), I clearly see immediate and near-term value for me with its use. What this model does is allow me to speak to upper management, and maybe middle management using a language they are likely to appreciate. I'm able to justify things like slack using economic models, so that I might be better able to communicate with them. So rather than talking about the flexibility and agility that well under 100% utilization might offer, instead I can discuss the cost of delivery related to high utilization (lack of slack). My primary failing up until now is not being able to explain what seems intuitive to me in a way that bridges the communication gap. This model seems to give me another way to both think about it and communicate it. I have not finished reading the book, but in the the spirit of small batch sizes, this is my first delivery. I'll be making updates as I read the book. I am already confident that I'll finish this book and that I can recommend it to people. It'll have to really work hard to go under a 5 star review. Finally (so far): my impression so far reading the book is that it seems well researched, brings together a number of disciplines in a non-trivial manner and seems to come form someone who legitimately has many good years of experience, not just the same 1 year of experience repeated over and over.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Audacious and Pathbreaking
*by T***. on May 26, 2011*

Donald Reinertsen's latest book on new product development aspires to making a global and historical impact. He systematically applies the theory and best practices of lean manufacturing, economics, queuing theory, statistics, web communications, operating systems, control engineering and military science to the new product development process. He summarizes these insights in 8 themes and 175 principles. Examples and graphs illustrate the concepts. This is a dense book. The target audience of marketing MBA's, industrial engineers, project and general managers will be challenged. It requires some familiarity with lean manufacturing, economics and operations research. The principles are illustrated but not obvious. The quality, lean manufacturing, Toyota Production System, theory of constraints and technical sources are briefly referenced. The rationale for existing (stage-gate) best practices is not explained. Limits and trade-offs are not discussed. Nonetheless, this is an audacious and path breaking book. Product development practitioners can learn and apply the principles of this book. Economics trumps simple versions of quality paradigms. Expected net lifetime value is king. Marginal cost/benefit analysis rules. Global optimums outweigh local ones. Proxy measures undermine optimal economic decision-making. Decisions matter, precision does not. Priority features/competitive advantages matter most. Economic rules of thumb allow decentralized decisions. Cost of delay is managed through an explicit value of time. Queuing theory manages delays. Project and task cycle times drive the cost of delay. Long queues increase defects, variability and risks. Misplaced high efficiency and utilization goals lead to delays, increased costs and disastrous momentum. Communications links between adjacent processes matter more than bottleneck capacity. Simple views that delays, variability, inventory or waste are evil or have infinite cost lead to bad decisions. Queues are everywhere in product development. Measure variability with a payoff function. It can be negative or positive. Testing generates information value. Statistics based steps reduce variation, such as smaller tasks and time horizons. Counterbalance and design reuse offset variability. Economic priorities, faster iterations and early high risk actions minimize the impact of variability. Smaller task batch sizes reduce variability and cycle time, accelerate feedback, improve engagement and reduce risk and overhead. Large batches increase costs, delay progress and may spin out of control. Optimum batch sizes are small and can be found through trial and error. Combine features in separately developed and tested modules. Smaller batches are more beneficial than capacity increases. Large batches impact every step of product development. Detailed planning and control of tasks is costly. It is more effective to control the work in process between major functions. As with TPS or Theory of Constraints, managing the flow of released product from stage to stage improves final results. Many scheduling, prioritization, resource and recovery strategies can minimize task WIP. A blended generalist/specialist staff skills profile offers flexible capacity. The flow of activities through product development can be managed. Use forecasts and share information between adjacent stages. Use cadence to set routine start/stop times. Synchronize tasks so that dependent events flow smoothly. Sequence tasks and change priorities based upon risk and incremental economic value added. Build in flexible paths and spare resources. Develop rapid feedback systems. Employ early warning systems and value at risk triggers to escalate reviews. Align activities through training, incentives and templates. Adjust decisively when required. Use frequent communication to build teams and short queues to build urgency. Employ flow metrics. Decentralize decision making to speed the flow and avoid management bottlenecks. Provide high level structure in the form of rough-cut plans, rules of thumb, intentions, templates and sequences. The principles in this book can be applied to any operations or development process. The value added is limited only by the time invested.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Impressive comprehensive "rule" book for designing your product development flow.
*by T***T on January 4, 2015*

It is a comprehensive set of "rules" to consider when designing your Product development flow, and to many there are true surprises and eye openers. It is mostly - as I see it - the same rules and ideas (and a few additions) as in the famous "Managing the Design Factory" book, but here it is organized more like a rules book with a long list of rules to go through and check for. It is a tough book to read from end to end (not sure that it is actually the intention). However the first 2-3 chapters which are more "normal" will alone justify purchasing this great book. (I did like the managing the design factory better though, because it was easier to read I think).

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