Managing the design factory
by Donald G. Reinertsen · first published 1997
80% recommend20% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Treats managing product development as a flow problem, with practical ideas on prioritizing projects by cost of delay and reducing queues. Written for software and product managers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The first book to put the principles of World Class Manufacturing to work in the development process, Managing the Design Factory combines the powerful analytical tools of queuing, information, and system theories with the proven ideas of organization design and risk management. The result: a methodical approach to consistently hit the "sweet spot" of quality, cost, and time in developing any product. Reinertsen illustrates these concepts with concrete examples drawn from his work with many leading companies across different industries. Unlike other books that promote rules and rituals based
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I agree with his recommendation of Don Reinertsen's _Managing the Design Factory_. (I assume that's the book he recommended.) I read it last year and it had a strong effect on me.
on “Think Relevance podcast with Rich Hickey” ↗In that case have you read "Managing the Design Factory" by Reinertsen? Excellent book on managing projects and teams.
on “Design Principles for Reducing Cognitive Load” ↗…book and introduces jobs-to-be-done with the milkshake story. “Creativity Inc.” (Ed Catmull) explains how Pixar manages people & throws in a few insights from mature (post Apple firing) Steve Jobs. “Managing the Design Factory” (Don Reinertsen) explains how to prioritize projects and analyze a business for bottlenecks in order to minimize cost of delay.
on “Ask HN: Best resources for non-technical founders to understand hacker mindset?” ↗Don Reinertsen http://www.reinertsenassociates.com/ author of "Developing Products in Half the Time" and "Managing the Design Factory" has a great quote about managing product priorities that bears on this. "Priorities: Last Refuge of the Innumerate What is our highest product development priority, cycle time or unit manufacturing…
on “Ask YC: How To Prioritize” ↗I was a project manager on web development efforts at IBM when I read that book and "Managing the Design Factory"[0] around the same time. The combination of the two completely changed how I approached managing projects generally. [0]http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Design-Factory-Donald-Reinert...
on “The Logic of Failure (2011)” ↗…are uncomfortable with the views expressed in this paper regarding the actual actions that software engineers perform might like http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design.h... and also "managing the design factory" by reinertsen.
on “The Personal Software Process Body of Knowledge” ↗Any list of this sort should include "Managing The Design Factory" by Donald G. Reinertsen. A thought-provoking evaluation of what to care about when managing software teams.
on “A reading list for new engineering managers” ↗…the construction of the first nuclear power plants, and 'Selling Microsoft', which discusses the day-to-day life and structure of enterprise technology salespeople in the 90s. By far the best has been 'Managing the Design Factory' by Donald Reinertsen, which I strongly recommend to software engineering managers. I really appreciated the exploration of how organising teams and tasks impacts development speed, cost, performance…
on “Reading "Business" Books Is a Waste of Time” ↗There's pretty good theory behind the idea of minimizing latency to improve throughput. One of the better books on this is "Managing the Design Factory", and a followup called "The principles of product development flow". These books are not about software development, but of product development in general. The first one actually predates agile, published…
on “Scrum is fragile, not Agile” ↗Reinertsen's books are very, very good. The most recent and most up-to-date is Principles of Product Development Flow, which that chart came from. The previous one, Managing the Design Factory, is pretty similar and I think it's a better read. Another great takeaway from it is to prioritize things by cost of delay, or even better, what he calls Weighted Shortest Job First, where you divide…
on “Story points are pointless, measure queues” ↗I've not watched the video nor read the book but I take it slightly differently. Reinertsen, in "Managing the Design Factory", describes the need for companies to generate high value information as efficiently as possible. Using Shannon's theory of information, he argues that low-information events are those events where the…
on “Some excerpts from recent Alan Kay emails” ↗The recent review at http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2I26D6N27OE91/ indicates that "Managing the Design Factory" can be seen as more of an introduction, whereas the latter book has more detail.
on “Think Relevance podcast with Rich Hickey” ↗Bible (the non fiction parts of it) and no more than dozen others I don’t recall titles until im in relevant context. Managing the Design Factory - is ine example of what I classify as professional literature, same category i put that huge red XSLT book into :)
on “Ask HN: How do you remember what you have read in a book?” ↗