"Success is Assured" was born from a pair using those design practices over a century ago: The Wright Brothers. They set about methodically learning the causal relationships between the different design decisions they needed to make and the performance of the airplane. The Wright Brothers fundamentally transformed the front end of development into a sharply focused learning and decision-making process, and thereby eliminated the late - process rework in which their competition was stuck.
Similarly, Toyota built an amazing manual product development system that consistently created a cadence of high quality products that customers want. Myriads of Lean principles, jargon, and tools have been introduced and applied with minimal impact on design loopbacks, engineering productivity, and knowledge reuse within small to midsize engineering companies – and almost no penetration within highly complex engineering companies. This book teaches methodologies to relentlessly expose knowledge gaps and trade-offs early and optimize results before detailed design begins, thereby avoiding the expensive firefighting and engineering rework that consume most of our engineering capacity today. This book teaches new thinking and methodologies to convert the chaotic front end of product development into a convergent process of set-based learning and continuous innovation – a game changer for companies that depend upon a steady flow of innovative products.