Long product development cycles dramatically reduce the potential return on investment we can achieve from successful new products. Most perniciously, long development cycles delay the time it takes to get customer feedback on whether we are building something valuable. Typical market research activities are poor at predicting a product/market fit, especially in new product categories. Research said that minivans and iPods would not be successful. In the absence of good data, people tend to get their pet projects funded. Particularly in enterprise IT, we often see spectacular amounts of money
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