Performance or Time To Market. What’s Your Choice?

Interesting article for those of us interested in new product development and time to market. www.projectsguru.co.uk

I found lots of interesting information on www.edn.com. The post was professionally written and I feel like the author has extensive knowledge in the subject. www.edn.com keep it that way.

If I recall correctly construction workers are generally not exempt: ie any crunch time comes with considerable financial benefits in the form of overtime ...

"As for "crunch time" pressures, try working in a construction industry to know what insane real pressures are." Particularly when a hurricane blew out the whole causeway.

I''m with you. There will always be some companies that do take advantage of salaried engineers. That''s true. As for "crunch time" pressures, try working in a construction industry to know what insane real pressures are. Especially big construction projects where there are penalties for missed deadlines. Or work in design-build projects where your plans are just a step ahead of construction by a few days or hours! One time I had to fax some detail drawings direct to the job site because the cement truck is waiting, the crew is waiting, and if they don''t pour out that wet cement soon, it''s going to stay in that truck forever.

SiGeek: 100% agreed. But not all products ship from startups. And true, even big companies can't move Christmas season any later etc; but in my experience a very significant percentage of the "time to market" push is merely a way of overworking engineers. Look around any large company and you'll see engineers routinely working 1 extra day a week (48 hrs) and significantly more during those obligatory "crunch times" that only seem to apply to engineering. It is easy to tell when "time to market" is real vs fake: when it is real, EVERYBODY'S paycheck is on the line and everyone is working overtime.

Oh Really... Time to market and "being first on the market" are two different things. You''re confusing the two. In your example, yes, the iPod is not the first player on the block, but it also certainly wasn''t perfect or complete when it was first releaed! And that''s what I''m talking about "time to market". The first iPod didn''t have video screens or huge capacities or other features. That''s why we''ve seen several generations of iPod later on. They''ve improved it in later rounds. I''m both an engineer and entrepreneur/small biz owner. You have no idea how important cash flow is, and positive income in a business. You say "Time to market is a marketing myth to push engineering to absurd overtime schedules" LOL... that is so farthest away from the truth. You know what, running a business is a race against insolvency. Start your own business with employees relying solely on you, so you can see the other point of view. Think of it as "GETS" Good Enough To Ship!

The first reply says 'get it out and get cash flow', the second says 'not so fast'. There is a difference, however, between rushing it out the door and putting it out when it's matured, even if it isn't perfect. iPhones have had all kinds of hints about things that aren't currently supported. Priuses have hole covers for things you can't get in North America. You can even leave the consumer guessing, as long as the 'out of box experience' is good. ~~~ If you're launching a space probe to Saturn, it's a good idea to 'know your (electronic) part' pretty thoroughly. Same goes for aircraft control systems and missile guidance systems. In all these situations mistakes aren't just a matter of warranty returns, and non-optimimum solutions have large follow-on effects. If your variances shorten 4 hours of battery life to 3.75 or the audio distortion is barely audible to the people that are going to listen to it, fast and cheap is better.

Really? Time to market wins? The iPod was not the first (or second or third) portable music player, but definitely the runaway winner. The various Windows OSes were not the first PC operating system and neither was Linux the first server OS, but both are doing pretty damn well in terms of market share. The tech world is littered with the failed carcasses of the rushed first to market solutions. First to market counts for *NOTHING* unless you hit the correct sweet spot of features, usability and price. Time to market is a marketing myth to push engineering to absurd overtime schedules and a convenient handle to blame for failure to hit the right specification. BTW: I said "right", not "perfect" or the "theoretical best".

Time to market definitely is the priority. Get the cash flow coming in.... ASAP! Then use the income to improve the product. You can have the best product but if your company runs out of money before the product launch, who benefits? Nobody. All of you will be out looking for a job, and applying at your competitor''s company... where maybe you''ll apply what you learned and improve their product.