This trend to be fast and flexible is not specific to small companies in fast-cycle industries, in fact, larger companies are also modifying their development processes to increase speed and incorporate evolving customer feedback and technologies throughout the process. To stay competitive, whether you're company is large or small, you'll need to find ways to balance flexibility with process structure.

Management Roundtable’s conference, Fast and Flexible Product Development: Iterative Processes for Moving-Target Projects, February 26 – 28, 2003 in Orlando, Florida will bring together leading experts and industry practitioners to explore the latest strategies on how to achieve a more agile, adaptive development process to help you keep costs low and be first to market with the "right" product.

• streamline and speed up phase gate reviews – keeping options open

• modify process methodologies and product architectures to make adjustments less painful

• reap the time-cutting potential of rapid prototyping technologies

• create a resource lean environment to get products efficiently out the door

• use the Design Structure Matrix (DSM) to effectively organize complex design projects and manage workflow with minimal cost and schedule risk