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A New Model of PPM (introduction)	Improving PPM with Feedback (full paper - longer download time)

I am developing and testing a new PPM model that provides PPM executives with the following benefits:

1. Feedback: The model analyzes PPM results and provides feedback to improve every step of PPM.
2. Scope: PPM is not just about portfolio creation. PPM should help a company improve its proposal processes (better choices) and strategy (better goals). The new model provides metrics for these tasks.
3. Simplicity: The new model stives to keep decision-making simple while complimenting existing PPM practices.
4. Metrics: With more to come, the model currently provides seven new metrics to help excecutives improve resource allocation, project evalution, project selection, proposal processes, pipeline managenet and strategic and financial goals.
5. Change Management: Because the model analyzes PPM results, it identifies opportunities for improving PPM. By exploiting these opportunities, one at a time, executives can consistently and more easily improve PPM.

You can learn more about the new model by exploring the New PPM Model section of this website.

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Decision-Making in Product Development

How does one's appraoch to decision making affect the qualities and performance of a business systems? To gain some insight, this paper contrasts two manufacturing systems: MRP and JIT. The constrast identifies two approaches to decision-making that affect business systesm: Outside-In and Inside-Out.

• Outside-In: This approach strives to improve decision making by increasing the range of choices and one's ability to select from those choices. Decision-makers model a decision, including aspects of its environment, in efforts to make the best decision. Decision-makers have greater discretion (more choices), and decision-making can become more complex.
• Inside-Out: This approach to decision making strives to reduce the frequency and sererity of mistakes by constraining decision-making with rules, tools and policies that are built into the system and apply directly to work. It accepts suboptimal decisions to achieve consistency. Decision-makers have less discretion (fewer choices), and decision-making becomes simpler.

If the Outside-In and Inside-Out approaches are applied to system control, they give business systems the following qualities.

QUALITIES OF BUSINESS SYSTEMS

Outside-In	Inside-Out
Explicitly model decisions	Guide decisions with rules, tools & policies built into the system
Make decisions outside of the system	Keep decisions inside the system
Push decisions into the system	System shows where decisions are needed
Seek perfection	Seek consistency
Embrace complexity	Seek simplicity
Adjust to mistakes	Eliminate mistakes
Consider many variables	Constrain decision making

After introducing Outside-In and Inside-Out and their impact on business sytems, the paper analyzes product development systems, including Phase-Gate, Lean and Agile.

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Technology landscapes: a new method for modeling innovation in simulations

This paper presents a new technology for simulating PPM, product development and project management. The technology has two unique qualities:

• It simulates interactions of product components with other product components, manufacturing systems and product applications. Issues like product architecture, set-based design, design for manufacturing, flexible product development and personalized medicine (pharmaceuticals) are simulated realistically.
• It enables detailed analysis of decision-making, risk management and managing complex projects. Simulation players receive personalized analysis of their management, and this feedback makes training exceptionally potent.

The paper presents the technology and pays less attention to applications. If you are interested in training simulations, please contact me.

The simulation technology has produced three US patents: 6,236,955; 6,408,263; 7,349,838.