Flexible product development
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Although the development of a new product naturally involves change from what came before it, the business processes and project management methodologies usually used for product development are not designed to accommodate change. The more innovative a new product is, the more likely it is that the voice of the customer, marketplace conditions, or the technologies being incorporated into the product will change during the course of development.
Unlike more traditional approaches, flexible development recognizes that change is likely during development and thus embraces change rather than resisting or denying it. The later a change can occur or the less disruptive it is, the more flexible a development process is. Thus, flexible methods are most useful for truly innovative new products. For more mature product categories, they are not only overly expensive but often unwise.
When applied to the development of software products, these methods are commonly known as agile software development. However, agile software methods generally rely on special characteristics of the software medium, especially object-oriented programming, which are not available for non-software products.
Consequently, flexible product development draws from some of the roots of agile software development but tends to use other tools and approaches that apply outside of the software medium.
[edit] See also
- Traditional product development
- Agile software development
- Traditional project management
- Mayo-Smith's Pyramid
