Methodology for the Suitability Validation of a Highly Iterative Product Development Approach for Individual Segments of an Overall Development Task

Today’s manufacturing companies are exposed to the challenge of fulfilling constantly growing and heterogeneous customer expectations. Simultaneously, the demand for delivering the highest quality in shortest time increases strongly. One way to handle these requirements is the highly iterative product development approach. By distributing development processes in short and iterative sub-processes, this method generates customer oriented and marketable products. However, most producing companies fail by trying to adopt the short-cycled concept without considering the suitability of these methods for the respective project. According to that fact, this paper aims at the presentation of a methodology which shows how to evaluate and select highly iterative product development methods for individual development scopes. A first application of this methodology indicated affirmative results regarding to the practicability within a startup enterprise. Still, there is need for further research, especially in the field of implementation.