Setting the PACE in Product Development

Project and product development. Inglorious, looked down at, in general just a "get it done and don't bitch about it" kind of topic. Adding the additional difficulty of getting a project done on time, on budget and without losing too many good employees along the path does not make the job any better, and that's why there are project management tools and books. If innovation must be included, then PACE really is a very difficult subject matter. This book does a decent job in highlighting what PACE is. What I am missing in this book (and any other, for that matter) is that what you really need to plan for is the known unknown, and how you mitigate the risk of the known unknown descending upon you and your project. Why? Because at least one disaster will strike, and it was foreseeable. What's more difficult is the unknown unknown, i.e. the unknowable concrete roadblock that will hit you, and how to make sure you account for the unknowable and unplannable (is that a word?) disaster.

This is an old book, but it’s value has not diminished by time. Technology and tools have changed, a new generation has come of age and into positions of leadership. But the basic principles still hold. Once a business transitions past a startup stage, these principles become central to its success. They must be learned and implemented with care. They can be fairly easily adapted to agile and CI/CD environments.

If you were to go back to the '70's with dictatorial management that reviewed everything - then you would find this world in the prescription of the book. He also supports bloated Project, Program and Product Manager systems. You know the ones - no one responsible, beautiful charts that can not seem to indicate product creep and slide, Engineers in multiple daily meetings so they can not engineer. The world in which many of you live or are going to.The last chapter or two, tells you the pitfalls that may be your eventual fate. You will most definitely need his PDM Software and probably his consultants if you adopt this tact. To think he quotes people and stories he knows nothing about - and he gets it wrong, both in his report and understanding.

With all the previous negative reviews, I was prepared not to like this book, but I must say that I thought it was pretty good. I haven't finished it yet, but with the first half, the models and concepts provided did make a lot of sense to me, and that's with about 25 years of product development experience, of which at least 8 years was in developling product development life cycles for my organization.

This book is good from a historical perspective but is quite dated, all of the examples are from the early 90's. Even the authors at PRTM are not selling PACE as the latest thinking. The Cooper book on Product Leadership is a good overview of stage gates, and The Toyota Product Development System provides a more holistic view of product development, covering culture.

This guide can be very misleading for those working in the software development world.Apply this method to Software Engineering, and you are revisiting the old Waterfall Method of software development. In today's E-commerce and e-Enterprise worlds, this is not a good place to visit for long. I would only recommend this to folks developing products in a manufacturing environment.However, Phase 0 Reviews could be a very useful tool on an executive level as a Project Methodology for initiating and prioritizing software development projects and ensuring a product's overall strategic fit while allocating development resources.

This book is THE manual for running rapid product development teams, written in a very easy to read, approachable format. The framework of the core team and review stages are incredibly insightful yet still tremendously pragmatic for any organization needing to maximize its development dollar and new product flow.

This is a well written book on PACE that informs new practitioners as well as reminds those of us familiar of the importance of this methodology. It also adds real world learning to the structure, making it a must-read for anyone interested in PACE.

Wow...fantastic is about all I can say. Brilliantly clear and simple read, very "hi-tech company focused", but 100% accurate...this really will put many companies to shame if they examined themselves after reading it...I just wish I could do a "jerry maguire" and give a copy of this to all of our senior management.

米国の大手コンサルティング会社「ピティグリオ・ラビン・トッド＆マクグラス社（PRTM社）」の新製品開発手法「PACE=Product And Cycle-time Excellence」を解説した教科書的な本。　新商品開発や新しいサービス開発のプロジェクトマネジメントを行う方には参考になるツールが解説されています。一方、この本を実用的に使うには、流行の「クリティカルシンキング」や、マイケルポーターの競争戦略論等のMBA的なアプローチ手法／ツール類を理解していないと使いこなすには苦しいと思われます。この本を読んで分からないところは、PRTM社に相談してくださいということなのでしょう。　そう考えると結構高くついてしまう本のような気もしますけど、自分的には役に立った部分も多かったので「星四つ」。