Based on my experience in the company, I think that the classical agile approach, based on frameworks born in the software world is not, by itself, able to meet the needs of physical or hardware product development.
Indeed, the following aspects of physical products must be considered:
The agile approach does not give enough emphasis to design review appointments, which are real gates or gates to authorize further investment.
It is indeed necessary, after a sequence of iterations representing the Product Concept Phase or Relase (or Feasibility Analysis), to do a review with key stakeholders.
A review of the expected value of the project, the time required, balancing estimated costs and expected revenues.
The set of iterations that represent the next phase of Operative Development, produces the construction of at least one industrialized and validated prototype and the release of the documentation required for mass production.This phase involves a very strong overlap of design, construction and design validation activities.
And a phase characterized by significant investment in prototype or pretype construction and related construction and validation equipment, which can far exceed the cost of the development team.
A Milestone plan is therefore always necessary to identify important follow-up appointments with stakeholders.
Similarly, lean logics that visualize flow such as Kanban Boards can be very useful especially for materials. So too, the visual lean decompositions of products called Barashi, during the construction and assembly stages, are very powerful approaches that should be integrated.
Unlike software products, for hardware products, the cost of repeatedly upgrading products at customers’ premises is, in the vast majority of cases, unaffordable.
It is from the point of view of updating production activities to be done on the product, it is from the point of view of materials management. Both of the materials needed for the product upgrade and the materials no longer needed after the upgrade.
In this case, agile development is normally limited to the process from ideation to release for mass production.
Maintenance of a hardware product, such as an industrial product, is very minor and usually occurs for production needs or to correct defects in the product itself.
In the course of my experience developing many different physical products, found the following combination of key elements very effective:
- Employment of an agile approach based primarily on Scrum in combination with User Story Mapping (and other agile practices when necessary). For backlog management the most powerful framework is in my experience Story Mapping. It is the tool most valued by the teams I have worked with.
- Integration of a mini Waterfall management in terms of Milestone and Gate of project evaluation and investment approval.
- Integration of some lean logic where possible, especially in the factory such as departmental Kanban board and Barashi.
- Set up visual management of the Portfolio of Products under development, highlighting Milestones and the status of the development itself.
What to call such an approach?
The term that I think comes closest to being able to define it is Elastic, as it includes the concept of physical flexibility and adaptability, but also the mental elasticity needed to integrate these key elements.
Agile and Elastic development is inclusive of other approaches while still respecting adaptive and flexible planning because it is iterative and incremental.
