Estimating Accuracy

Reviews in the first 15% stand to eliminate 95% of the problems!

Ashok Gupta's benchmark article in California Management Review in the Winter 1990 issue on "Accelerating The Development Of Technology-Based Products" is still the benchmark article today when it comes to the importance of the fuzzy front end. Dr. Gupta's research indicates that "71%" of all things that go wrong in development can be traced to things that did not occur in product definition. Even if Dr. Gupta's research is 50% wrong, then "35.5%" of all things that go wrong in development can be traced to things that did not occur in product definition - fully one third and maybe as great as 71%. Why then are so few design reviews performed prior to development being approved.