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Papers on PPM feedback and project success rates

As I speak with PPM practitioners I find growing discontent for current PPM practices. Is there an alternative?



Consider abandoning the static framework of portfolio value and adopting the dynamic framework of value flowing through a pipeline. You would then strive to increase the flow of value, but how do you accomplish this feat?



You would use an approach like the Theory of Constraints (TOC), where you identify the practices and parts of your pipeline that limit the flow of value and then improve those practices and parts. This approach requires (1) knowledge of how value flows through a pipeline and (2) means of identifying the bottlenecks. Two of my papers introduce concepts that fulfill these needs.



The paper “Identify Projects with the Greatest Chance of Success” presents a simple equation that governs the flow of value through a pipeline or Phase-Gate system. This equation is the Newton’s Law of pipelines, and you should learn it. If you wish to improve your pipeline, you must understand how it behaves.



The paper “Introducing PPM Feedback Metrics” presents a method for identifying the bottlenecks that limit the flow of value in your pipeline. Specially, it introduces methods for analyzing your pipeline’s results and producing feedback metrics that evaluate every part of your pipeline. This new technique brings Six Sigma to pipeline management.



These two papers present new concepts, and their focus is on the concepts – not on implementation. These are not “how to” papers but papers that introduce new ways of understanding PPM.

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Decision-Making in Business Systems & Product Development

How does one's appraoch to decision making affect the qualities and performance of a business systems? To gain some insight, this paper contrasts two manufacturing systems: MRP and JIT. The constrast identifies two approaches to decision-making that affect business systesm: Outside-In and Inside-Out.

• Outside-In: This approach strives to improve decision making by increasing the range of choices and one's ability to select from those choices. Decision-makers model a decision, including aspects of its environment, in efforts to make the best decision. Decision-makers have greater discretion (more choices), and decision-making can become more complex.
• Inside-Out: This approach to decision making strives to reduce the frequency and sererity of mistakes by constraining decision-making with rules, tools and policies that are built into the system and apply directly to work. It accepts suboptimal decisions to achieve consistency. Decision-makers have less discretion (fewer choices), and decision-making becomes simpler.

If the Outside-In and Inside-Out approaches are applied to system control, they give business systems the following qualities.

After introducing Outside-In and Inside-Out and their impact on business sytems, the paper analyzes product development systems, including Phase-Gate, Lean and Agile.

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Decision-Making & Flexibility in Product Development

When facing uncertainty, should you increase or decrease flexibility? How do uncertainty, complexity and flexibility affect product development? This paper answers these quesitons, and it derives the following principles for managing flexibility in product development:

1. When facing uncertainty, decrease flexibility.
2. Flexibility is a competence one develops, not a decision variable one sets at the right level.
3. To build flexible systems, reduce the difficulty of product development by simplifying and constraining business processes..
4. Increase flexibility by improving competence.
5. Increase flexibility by reducing uncertainty.
6. Increase flexibility by improving the quality of choices.
7. Increase flexibility by lowering the cost of mistakes or raising the benefits of good decisions.
8. Missed opportunities will tempt managers into increasing flexibility too much, so the managers must monitor decision errors. If too many errors occur, managers should reduce flexibility.

The paper is academic, but it illustrates each principle with successful product development practices.

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Technology landscapes: a new method for modeling innovation in simulations

This paper presents a new technology for simulating PPM, product development and project management. The technology has two unique qualities:

• It simulates interactions of product components with other product components, manufacturing systems and product applications. Issues like product architecture, set-based design, design for manufacturing, flexible product development and personalized medicine (pharmaceuticals) are simulated realistically.
• It enables detailed analysis of decision-making, risk management and managing complex projects. Simulation players receive personalized analysis of their management, and this feedback makes training exceptionally potent.

The paper presents the technology and pays less attention to applications. If you are interested in training simulations, please contact me.

The simulation technology has produced three US patents: 6,236,955; 6,408,263; 7,349,838.