update 2009/08/22: Jason Yip also recommended "Lean Product and Process Development" by Allen C. Ward.
Gadi Amit: "Against that "unreliable" branded-personality design management, multidisciplinary agencies push the notion of large teams and a rigid process. The message of the process crowd is simplistic, "have a few more disciplines in place and we can create the winning product with the right design." Here comes the ethnographer and the strategist and the focus-group studies and the 500-page dissertations, and so on. I have yet to see any hard proof that these large processes yield higher rates of success in design. I have met more than a few large organizations that will not take this any longer. The process method managed to stifle creativity and nourish argumentative myopics while exhausting corporate budgets and personnel. The case of Doug Bowman, Google's just-resigned lead designer and the 41 shades of Blue sounds painfully familiar. As you churn out more creative work, more data-points and more "scientific" validation, your design never gets better. The process method justified large design budgets yet never reliably delivered. It catered to the corporate ladder that is now gone. It required time and the ability to commit resources that we've probably lost for the next decade. "
Steven Keith responds: " However, I cannot see how what you advocate can work, in reality.
I believe one of those incessant problems with design management is that everyone who cares or seeks methods to address their own challenges is too unique or idiosyncratic to borrow workable insights, processes or anecdotes from all the great thinkers and practitioners out there. I wish I had a dollar for every time I had a client proclaim they're going to do the Sapper or Ives thing. Whatever that is. Is this the consiglieri you speak of?
In the final analysis, I see a gorgeously articulated avalanche of design mgmt ideas, methodologies and articles anchored to edge cases like Apple, Google, IDEO and the like. They're easy to swan over and even fun. But, these edge cases are so disconnected from what will work for most. In fact, I see them doing potentially more harm than good. How many presentations at conferences do you see about really average companies that believe in the promises of design thinking but are struggling because they cannot bridge their "today reality" with the mythological fully integrated design business of tomorrow? There are good reasons why."
I see an ugly fact getting in the way of both these positions and it's called the Toyota Product Development System (TPDS), which marries a strong process and measurement culture with Amit's concept of a consiglieri role. In Toyota that position called the Chief Engineer. To argue either end of the process v creativity spectrum in product design, you have to be able to explain away the Chief Engineer role in Toyota and Toyota's phenomenal market success, which has made them one of the largest companies in the world (10th in the Global Fortune 500). In my sector, when people talk about design, they tend to obsess on Apple. They should also look closely at Toyota, who have a design system than transcends both individual brilliance and process.
I think most software people know about Toyota's methods through Lean Software Development and the Toyota Production System (TPS). TPDS is just as important to understand the product development angles. To get a grasp on the TPDS this book, "The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process And Technology" is highly recommended as is "Product Development for the Lean Enterprise"
