Front End Zen

I like paradoxes.  I even like the word “paradox”.  It’s just so delicious – things that taken apart must be true but taken together cannot be true.  So like life. There is a lot that is paradoxical about innovation – especially about new product development.  One...

Executing in the Fuzzy Front End

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with writing.   Don’t get me wrong, I love it more than I hate it. It’s just that I invariably have a hard time getting started.  I sit down and usually struggle – there are so many ideas, and they all seem to...

A Long Term Affair

“How many I/O slots do we need to provide, and for which type of I/O cards?” asked my R&D project manager. In a previous life, I spent many years as a marketing planner for large computer systems. What this really entails is giving guidance to the R&D,...

Essential Agile

The Agile approach to software development has been one of the more fun innovations of the past few years. It’s fun because so much of Agile involves saying out loud truths which everyone knew but no one would acknowledge or act on. Things like: “No Product...