HBR's 10 Must Reads Collection (12 Books)

Six Myths of Product Development

The Fallacies That Cause Delays, Undermine Quality, and Raise Costs. by Stefan Thomke and Donald Reinertsen

MOST PRODUCT-DEVELOPMENT MANAGERS are always struggling to bring in projects on time and on budget. They never have enough resources to get the job done, and their bosses demand predictable schedules and deliverables. So the managers push their teams to be more parsimonious, to write more-detailed plans, and to minimize schedule variations and waste. But that approach, which may work well in turning around underperforming factories, can actually hurt product-development efforts.

Although many companies treat product development as if it were similar to manufacturing, the two are profoundly different. In ...