How quickly should I bring my product into production?
As fast as possible, of course! The sooner we start selling, the sooner we can start making money.
While that might be true, I’d argue that the right answer is more like this:
As fast as I can manage with an appropriate level of risk.
The key difference is that I’m now engaging thoughtfully with the risk side of the equation, and not only looking at the upside.
Some risk is necessary, even good, in order for our business to survive and succeed. The key is to choose your risk wisely.
If I’m moving so fast that I’m not documenting design changes, this won’t directly impact my ability to sell. But it will definitely impact my ability to support my product in the field. If we’re making a cheap or simple product, this probably doesn’t matter.
If it’s something more complicated that needs to be serviced during a warranty claim, all of a sudden our service techs don’t know what they’re working on, and we waste valuable time and money figuring out how this unit was built before we can even diagnose the problem.
What about if we cut our test program short, selling before we have confidence in our long term reliability? Everything looks great for the first six months, then all of a sudden 50 percent of the units we’ve sold fail, and become expensive warranty claims. Not good!
You’ll never know with certainty which risks are the right risks, but let’s try to give it an honest look and make the best decisions we can!
-Brian Schoolcraft
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