An Introduction to Agile Product Design

When 3D CAD for Windows arrived in the mid-’90s it changed the new product design process forever. But could a revolutionary change from then be a desktop-bound impediment to your design process now? The e-book at today's Check It Out link argues “yes, but you have options.”

Onshape's “An Introduction to Agile Product Design” isn't here to bury CAD. It's here to say that there's another radical change in the new product design process under way and you can leverage it to succeed with the speed and nimbleness of a startup.

The e-book “An Introduction to Agile Product Design” explores and explains how modern technologies can improve your new product design processes to meet today's challenges. Image courtesy of Onshape Inc.

So, what is Agile Product Design?

Essentially, it's a collaborative design approach emphasizing rapid iterations and snug communications between diverse teams located wherever in the world. It stresses quick, open-minded reaction to competitive and user forces instead of strict plodding along with a preconceived plan. It approaches design as a series of fast product improvements rolling out nonstop.

Blame the cloud. It probably changed your manufacturing relationships already. Take your contract manufacturers. They're likely spread across borders and time zones. Your partners’ e-faces come and go like your projects. It’s easier and faster this way. You focus on your expertise and they focus on theirs.

Already, the cloud may have changed your relationship with certain applications. You may upload designs to an analysis-tuned cluster in the cloud. Why? Because it's easier than buying more and more hardware, maintaining software and so on.

This e-book argues that your new product design process can benefit from this sort of action as well. CAD teams no longer have to be confined within the “one person with the design at a time” paradigm that worked great at the turn of the century.

The e-book explains the benefits of an Agile Product Design process, such as multiple designers collaborating on a model naturally, faster development, more opportunity for rapid innovation and real-time data management, to name a few. It reinforces assertions with third-party data like surveys and reports. It teems with links to supplementary information. It wraps with an opportunity to demo Onshape so that you can judge for yourself if Agile Product Design could change your design process forever.

“An Introduction to Agile Product Design” does many things well. Perhaps best is that it'll get you thinking about your design process in terms of today’s technologies rather than those of the past. Hit today's Check it Out link for your copy. Good stuff.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, DE