Process Design III -- Design the Process

by Jim Highsmith

There are fundamental shifts driving economies, the structure of products that we build, and the nature of the processes we use to build products. "These changes in products, technologies, firms, and markets are not a passing phenomenon," according to Carliss Baldwin, Harvard Business School professor and Kim Clark, dean of the Harvard Business School faculty ( Design Rules: The Power of Modularity). "These fundamental changes driven by powerful forces deep in the economic system, forces which moreover have been at work for many years ... we must be prepared to dig deep, for the forces that matter are rooted in the very nature of things, and in the processes used to create them."