The theme of this newsletter is many-sidedness. By this term I mean the multiplicity of viewpoints that are appropriate when developing a product.
How difficult is it to develop a product that meets customers’ needs while at the same time being industrially buildable, having a low environmental impact, and more?
This confronts the development team with continuous design choices, and to avoid continuing too far in the wrong direction, it is good to develop alternative solutions in parallel.
It is something that almost certainly each of us has encountered in purchasing a product customized to our needs.
Especially if we are buying it with the needs of more than one person in mind, such as in the case of a couple, a family, or a membership group, it is advisable to explore alternative solutions together with those who develop the solution for us.
The final choice is reached after repeated meetings during which the least attractive solutions are skimmed.
This need emerges whenever there is a desire to reduce the risks of deciding too early on a design solution.
This approach called Development Based on Concurrent Solutions or Set Based Concurrent Engineering, enables risk reduction.
The approach is successful because it focuses the team on “developing just enough” solutions for the team to make an evaluation together with stakeholders and the customer.
When the last solution is very unsatisfactory, this approach allows us to back off, perhaps only one step, and start again from one of the previously abandoned solutions.
This is an approach that the architect Andrea Palladio also employed as early as the 1500s. I saw in a fine exhibition, “The Renaissance Factory,” that Palladio had come up with as many as 17 alternative versions of a villa plan to propose to the client. Also in the same exhibition, it is understood that even in the final stages of design, Palladio always proposed alternative solutions to the client.
In this mode of development there is the continuous comparison of solutions that always have different production and purchasing costs and impacts.
When developing a product, it is necessary to balance functional goals with those of making the product industrially manufacturable.
I have encountered at least 13 aspects to take into account during the development of a physical or hardware product. Among these I particularly highlight manufacturability, mountability, maintainability, cost, environmental impact throughout life until disposal, aesthetic design, and usability.
The design approach that takes these aspects into account is called Design for X, and it is part of a broader approach called Concurrent Engineering.
This many-sidedness of viewpoints allows us to make design choices that balance functional and industrialization aspects.
Each of these development elements is thus a continuous combination of sets of alternatives, each of which is evaluated, both individually and as a whole, for functionality and impact on the design-for-X factors.
The iterative and incremental Agile approach with a cross-functional team is ideal for concurrent solution development and design-for-X.
When I think of product development, I imagine that it is contained within a polyhedron with a multiplicity of faces, where on each faces the bearer of a specific interest.
These stakeholders of specific needs may be customers or their representatives, and the various business functions represented by the cross-functional development team.
I personally see this many-sidedness as an opportunity that fosters creativity because it pushes us to continually face contradictions, which these multiplicities of aspects always bring out.
I remember the experience I had with my product development teams who, under conditions of psychological safety in the face of errors, always wanted to explore alternative, sometimes breakthrough solutions to more traditional ones.
It is from overcoming contradictions that inventions and innovations are born.
