There’s a great article in the online version of the Wall Street Journal titled “For RIM, Less Research Could Mean More Motion“.
There are a couple of choice quotes from the article that parallel what I always try to share with others when I am talking about the business benefits of agile.“After all, there’s little apparent connection between R&D expenditures and successful product launches. Apple, for instance, has come up with new products like the iPhone and the iPad despite spending less on R&D over the entire past decade than Microsoft did in fiscal 2010 alone.”
“Apple benefits from focus. It doesn’t produce an endless variety of products. Apple releases only one new version of its iPhone a year, the recent release of a version made for Verizon Wireless’s network being an exception.”
The agile and iterative approach to development gives us some surprisingly effective tools to help businesses make more intelligent, value based decisions regarding their investments. While I don’t have any insight into the details of Apple’s approach, as an observer I see Apple as a company that epitomizes the spirit of the second value of the Agile Manifesto: Working software over comprehensive documentation. This approach, intense focus, launching products with a killer feature or two but little more, and then iteratively improving the product over time (and selling more) year after year seems understandable enough, but is also remarkably rare.
So before you continue spending money on R&D or on the continued development of a system where you have no idea about the return on value, consider carefully what you’re preparing to do.
Stay tuned to our blog to learn more about this topic. I will be presenting about this topic at the upcoming Seattle Scrum Gathering on May 16 – 18, 2011 and the Shanghai Scrum Gathering on June 24 – 25, 2011 (consider stopping by if you’re close to either event) and I’ll share the slides and insights gained from the audience after the events.
