What do you think?
Rate this book
Flexible Product Development: Building Agility for Changing Markets
In this landmark book, Preston Smith attributes the recent declinein innovation to pressure from financial markets that drivesmanagement toward rigid development approaches such as phaseddevelopment processes, Six Sigma, and project office. Theseprocesses have unintentionally (but effectively) made changesduring development more difficult, disruptive, and expensive, whilethe need for change continues at an accelerating pace.
Flexible Product Development is a hands-on resource thatprovides the tools and strategies needed to restore flexibility toany organization and remove the obstacles that stand in the way ofresponsive new product development. Preston Smith introducesapproaches that can enhance development process flexibility bycreating and maintaining development options, delaying decisions,and, in general, reducing the cost of change. Step-by-step, heexplains the basics of flexible product development, provides abroad array of flexibility-enhancing tools, and guides the readerin modifying the organization?s values to embrace this new way ofoperating.
Flexible Product Development is a hands-on resource thatprovides the tools and strategies needed to restore flexibility toany organization and remove the obstacles that stand in the way ofresponsive new product development. Preston Smith introducesapproaches that can enhance development process flexibility bycreating and maintaining development options, delaying decisions,and, in general, reducing the cost of change. Step-by-step, heexplains the basics of flexible product development, provides abroad array of flexibility-enhancing tools, and guides the readerin modifying the organization?s values to embrace this new way ofoperating.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 24, 2026
Given its pedigree I was hoping that this would be more like The Principles of Product Development Flow by Donald G. Reinertsen, a book which contains timeless, fundamental principles behind flow systems like Kanban and deepens your knowledge even if you already know the basics. I was hoping this book would do a similar thing for agility as a product development methodology.
What I got instead was a book that was probably good for its time insofar as it extracted some of the principles of different agile philosophies in software and broadened them both beyond particular methodologies and beyond software development. However, I feel like the ideas there have been better integrated into the common discourse under the Lean umbrella. That, combined with the fact that many of the examples felt rather dated, meant that while this was not a bad read, it's wasn't really worth revisiting now, nearly 20 years after its publication
What I got instead was a book that was probably good for its time insofar as it extracted some of the principles of different agile philosophies in software and broadened them both beyond particular methodologies and beyond software development. However, I feel like the ideas there have been better integrated into the common discourse under the Lean umbrella. That, combined with the fact that many of the examples felt rather dated, meant that while this was not a bad read, it's wasn't really worth revisiting now, nearly 20 years after its publication
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review