Structured Approaches Reduce the Likelihood of Costly Problems
Coiru 11 on dysfunctions exhibited by development teams during concept generation include:
• Consideration of only one or two alternatives, often proposed by the most assertive members of the team.
• Failure to consider carefully the usefulness of concepts employed by other
firms in related and unrelated products.
• Involvement of only one or two people in the process, resulting in lack of
confidence and commitment by the rest of the team.
• Ineffective integration of promising partial solutions.
• Failure to consider entire categories of solutions.
A structured approach to concept generation reduces the incidence of these problems by encouraging the gathering of information from many disparate information sources, by guiding the team in the thorough exploration of alternatives, and by providing a mecha nism for integrating partial solutions. A structured method also provides a step-by-step procedure for those members of the team who may be less experienced in design-intensive activities, allowing them to participate acti vely in the process.