Reducing Time-to-Market Consulting

Time-based competition is important for many companies.  In our experience there are several basic factors that need to be addressed to reduce time-to-market.

  • The availability of resources to execute the project by not overloading the product pipeline.
  • An effective product development process with a minimum of waste and late design iteration.
  • A collaborative product development team that effectively coordinates activities.
  • A tightly integrated suite of design automation tools

These are the objectives of lean product development (LPD) practices.  We can assist with making improvements and implementing these practices.  The steps and activities we can perform to achieve these objectives are as follows.

Assessment

One of the first steps is to conduct an assessment to determine where there are the best opportunities for improvement.  Our Product Development Assessment evaluates your company’s process, practices, organization and systems against 270 best practices as the basis for identifying areas of improvement.

Managing the Product Pipeline

We have found that one of the most common and significant factors affecting time-to-market is an overloaded pipeline.  We can help fix this issue by putting in place the following management practices and tools.

  • A portfolio management process and system to prioritize product development projects.
  • A gate review process to evaluate projects and kill less opportune projects thereby freeing up development capacity for more opportune projects.
  • A pipeline management approach based on Kanban principles to only initiate projects as resources become available.
  • System tools to plan and manage product development resources and manage the product pipeline. See information on PD-Trak for an example of an effective tool for this purpose.

Implementing Lean Product Development Practices

One of the objectives of lean product development is to reduce waste in any form – time or resource use.  Based on an assessment of the best opportunities, we can implement the most appropriate lean product development practices to meet the objectives of reducing time-to-market.

Critical Chain Project Management

Critical chain project management (CCPM) is a methodology to more tightly plan projects by eliminating slack time in scheduling and instead build-in and manage higher level buffers.  It has been proven to reduce development time by up to 50%, especially for the most critical projects.  We can assist in implementing CCPM and its supporting system tools.

Improving the Effectiveness of Product Development Teams

High-performing product development teams excel at inter-team communication, coordination and collaboration.  Their activities are tightly integrated as a result.  We can assist in developing high-performing teams and identifying how they can work to reduce time-to-market.

For further information, contact Kenneth Crow at DRM Associates
Phone +1 310-377-5569
Email: k.crow@npd-solutions.com