Interview with Joachim Pfeffer: Speed and quality through agile product development

Agile product development promises to get a grip on the challenges of our time: Increasing complexity, high competition. Joachim Pfeffer has been working as a consultant, trainer and coach on this topic for over 20 years and has written several books on the subject.

On February 3, 2025, I had a conversation with Joachim about how companies can realize the promise of agile product development for their business.

This article consists of two parts. The first part is about definition, added value and culture, the second part next week will be about concrete implementation. If you don't want to wait until next week, you can watch the recording of the video now.

What is agile product development?

Lean (agile) product development means developing products iteratively and incrementally in small learning loops in order to learn faster.

Joachim Pfeffer

Joachim pointed out that the term Agility is often misunderstood or overused - it has simply been a hyped buzzword for a long time. That's why he prefers the term Leanas it is more focused on efficiency and value creation.

Lean product development means working with minimal overhead and maximum customer benefit, avoiding unnecessary processes and developing marketable solutions quickly. It is less about frameworks and more about a mindset that promotes iterative development and rapid adaptation.

Instead of concentrating on rigid methods or processes, modern product development is about reacting flexibly to changes and focusing on customer benefits, fast learning cycles and continuous improvement.

30% develop faster with value stream mapping

I am always on the lookout for good case studies. So I asked Joachim if he had a good case study. As his first case study, he described the experience of a workshop held by a semiconductor manufacturer. The focus of the workshop was a Value stream mapping (Value Stream Analysis).

The company was faced with the challenge of shortening development times and improving product quality at the same time. Traditional, sequential processes often led to long iteration loops and inefficient coordination between departments. The analysis revealed that many processes were slowing down work, particularly due to long idle times, which the team identified in the workshop.

Joachim introduced the following measures with the team:

• Early prototyping
• Parallelization of the development steps
• Closer cooperation between design, simulation and production
• Streamlining processes

A key lever for accelerating the development process was the reduction of idle times

Joachim Pfeffer

The result was a significant reduction in development time of 30 %, improved coordination between the teams, less idle time and an optimized balance between performance and costs.

Results are not immediate

A success story like the one just presented does not happen overnight. Instead, we need to focus on long-term optimization with continuous improvements (which Andreas Willert in his interview has also said, by the way). To see any progress at all, several iterations have to be run through. Since the cycles are often many months long at the beginning, a year is a good time frame to get significant results.

However, the results can be impressive if the team has found good measures: Depending on the product and implementation, lead times can be reduced from several months to just a few weeks.

The most important thing is that as senior a leader as possible is willing to go through an experiment for 12-24 months with no (or few) compromises in order to really learn what it brings us.

The path to agile development

It requires not only technological adjustments, but above all the will and conviction of management. The transition to short, iterative development cycles requires a new way of thinking throughout the entire organization: away from rigid processes and towards a culture of experimentation, learning and rapid adaptation.

Transparency plays a decisive role here. Teams must have a clear overview of development progress at all times, be able to discuss challenges openly and make quick decisions. This is only possible if hierarchies are made more flexible and decision-making powers are shifted as closely as possible to the operational teams.

Cooperation between departments is also essential. Development, simulation, production and quality assurance must no longer operate in isolation, but must be closely interlinked. This requires a cultural and a technical component. The second part next week will deal with the technical aspects.