How Long Before We See Results?

Do you have anyone telling you that you won't see any benefit from efforts to change product development for many years - or until the products now at the very beginning of development have made it all the way to product release?

That's both incorrect and dangerous. No matter how long your product development lifecycles are, you should be able to see real improvement in the metrics that matter to you within one year. This is important, because publicly-run companies have notoriously short attention spans. Any change initiative that spans more than two years, but produces no tangible results until Year 3 is an initiative living on borrowed time.

If your product development lifecycles are longer than that (especially if they are very long - three to five years) you should be diligent about looking for opportunities to increase flow in product development at every phase of the lifecycle. No product development program should be exempt from the need to rethink things. Even the products that were developed almost entirely under the old paradigm should benefit in ways that lead to lower product costs, especially warranty costs and a smoother transition to manufacturing.

It is true that completely reinventing product development takes several complete product lifecycles - especially if the goal is to achieve Toyota's level of competence. But it does not follow that the business must have faith and patiently wait for results.

In fact, if significant results are not forthcoming in the first year, that's an indicator to me that the change initiative is not gaining traction. The longer it takes before the numbers start to move, the long-awaited results become less and less likely to materialize.