Change: Embrace It, Don't Deny It

Abstract

OVERVIEW:Change midstream in a product development project often means cost and budget overruns, schedule delays and product defects. Understandably, managers dislike change and have installed systems, such as phased development, to inhibit it. On the other hand, change—from understanding the customer better, from market dynamics and from technology advances—is connected inescapably with innovation, which management seeks. This article proposes an alternative: build a set of tools and approaches to accommodate change without undue disruption, thus reintroducing flexibility into product development. The flexibility techniques described in this article were inspired by the recent reintroduction of flexibility into the parallel field of software development by the agile software movement. They can be used defensively to deal effectively with imposed change or offensively to actually lead change.

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