System Architecture: Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems, First Edition

9.3 The Product Development Process

Nearly every large firm today has defined an internal product development process (PDP). This captures the methodology of product development, including the terminology, phases, milestones, schedules, and lists of tasks and outputs. The intent of the PDP is to provide an enterprise framework that captures the wisdom of previous development efforts and provides standard processes and approaches (which upstream efforts reflect lessons learned from past developments, which test procedures are critical to regulatory success, and so on).

From our perspective, a principal advantage of the PDP is that it is a tool for reducing ambiguity by defining tasks and responsibilities. It is easy to become lulled into the notion ...