PM Podcast Episode 216: Using Agile for Consumer Goods Development

This week's episode of The Project Management Podcast:

In 2001, seventeen software developers met at a ski resort in Snowbird, Utah. They all faced the same problem: the need for an alternative to the slow moving, waterfall approach to improve their software development projects and the “agile” model for software development was born.

So, how does this innovation apply to new product development in the consumer goods industry? The benefits of the agile software development process - increased speed-to-market, reduced costs, enhanced focus, and minimized wasted time in development - apply to any development organization, whether the end result is a consumer product or software application. These gains are especially important in today’s economic climate where development budgets are constrained, competition is fierce, and expectations from both senior leaders and consumers have greatly increased.

To explore how to best do this I invited Matt Priest (www.kalypso.com) onto the program and give us his insights on the topic. He’ll not only answer all my questions but also introduce us to the three simple Agile principles that we should be using when developing new consumer goods, which are:

• engage the consumer early
• collaborate iteratively throughout the development process
• institute a closed-loop learning process

Please go to The PM Podcast to find this and all previous episodes...