Through our new cross-functional teams we are in the process of integrating the contents of the book into our enterprise management system.
The transformation that has taken place within our company at all levels since we have adopted the Holistic Approach is very evident and measurable.
It has delighted both our owners and our customers and resulted in a highly motivated, effective and focused workforce.

As part of the rejuvenation of our products, I launched the "new look" project as engineering manager. Early on, it was clear that the project had a lot of skepticism, factions, diverse opinions, and general resistance to change. As Stephen Armstrong suggests, change management is a very profound process to establish and maintain. He also implies that engineers may only focus on the linear and technical process and perhaps not grasp or control the other influences that can affect the success of true product development. In the case of Summit, the president joined the project team and participated actively in the meetings and the process because I think that he knew that this had to be a "holistic" process. This was critical because of the importance of the project to the company. Some team members at the meetings suggested that he was usurping my role as project leader. I was engineering manager and had assumed the role of "team leader" because traditionally product development was centered in engineering/R&D. What I experienced was a lot of resistance and resentment from other departments such as manufacturing, QA, and service. I realized that if the project were to succeed that I would need a strong mandate from the top and sustainable support from the corner office, along with much better teamwork. I did not resent the president's presence. Instead, I sensed that something good and interesting was happening. In retrospect, I now see that he (the president) wanted an integrated (holistic) solution and that there were forces and influences that only he could influence or control. The lesson to me was that thinking of the project only in a linear technical fashion, while important, was not the complete answer to getting things done in the needed time frame. The final project was not perfect in all respects. While we were able to keep development cost down, this did take more time because of the need to locate and coordinate contract resources and unexpected problems with certain key vendors. Also, we spent resources on a feature that was later decided to eliminate. Regardless, we did demonstrate to the marketplace that we had up-to-date technology and the commitment to support our products going forward.

A couple of other items
* Our president (COO) sent the whole company off to project management training. This was an important step because it provided a common agenda and dialog for the team and it showed the commitment of top management to success of the project and the product.

* The COO's time and availability became a problem because of business pressures. He did not abandon the project and appointed a second-in-command, a marketing director, to continue the day-to-day operations. The marketing director had sufficient communications skills, organizational clout, and the ability to stimulate teamwork that kept the process going. In fact, it was one of the best functioning teams because a workable process replaced the interdepartmental conflicts.

The COO was and is a smart, demanding, and a really good leader. What he did was to address the product development process in the holistic manner that Stephen describes. At times, I felt that my role as engineering manager was being affected by the President's intervention. The president was careful to get my agreement and he made a point of sitting beside me at meetings to lend support. I realize now that I could not have pulled off the project by myself. The engineering process alone had been tried twice before and had failed to produce results. It was an uphill struggle with a lot of technical challenges along with the project challengers. The political, organizational, etc. issues were too large and beyond the scope of my control. I am a good manager in the engineering process but not in the league of the president. So the purpose of the article is to point out the revelation that I had during the project and especially when I read the book.

Those who do not apply a holistic approach to product development are most likely old school executives/engineers (we've done it this way for 30 years) who are the blockers in the organization. The author describes in detail the tactics to deal with blockers. The blockers usually ignore the human issues and think a team is just a collection of people in a room.