In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies live or die by their ability to develop and launch new products efficiently. Yet despite investments in tools, talent, and process improvement, many organizations still find product development to be a frustratingly slow, unpredictable, and costly endeavor.

This presentation will explore how Lean Product Development offers a better way — not by copying the tools of lean manufacturing, but by embracing a fundamentally different mindset that’s tailored to the realities of product development: uncertainty, iteration, learning, and variability.

Drawing on over two decades of experience leading and supporting product development projects, this talk dives deep into the principles that actually move the needle — many of them drawn from the work of Donald Reinertsen. You’ll learn how to:

Reduce queues and shorten feedback loops to accelerate decision-making.

Limit work-in-progress to increase focus, flow, and responsiveness.

Use economic thinking (like cost of delay) to prioritize the most valuable work.

Avoid the hidden traps of stage-gate processes and overly linear planning.

Design systems that support learning, speed, and flexibility — instead of blocking them.

Real-world stories and examples will illustrate how these principles can be applied in both startup and established company settings — across hardware, software, and hybrid product environments. Whether you’re an engineer, product leader, or executive, you’ll walk away with practical strategies to make your development process faster, more adaptive, and more reliable.

This session is especially relevant for anyone who has tried to “lean out” their development process using manufacturing-based approaches — only to find that applying the wrong type of discipline can make things worse, not better. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of what makes product development different, and what kind of lean approach actually works.

MDM West 2026

Lean Product Development: Getting to Market Sooner and Cheaper

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