Introduction
Steve Grand, the President and CEO of Mattson wanted to experiment whether the product development technologies applied in the software industry could be used to enhance the food industry. He, therefore, decided to set up a contest for three teams three with development processes similar to those in the software industry. The teams were to come up with a cookie that would be liked by most of the American people and to meet some specific nutritional and calorie standards (Crawford & Robertson, P.1-8). The first team was to use the open-source method whereby different experts in the food industry would work together, each handling their area of specialization. They would then come up with suggestions and, in turn, choose the best out of them to develop. The second team used the extreme programming method whereby a team of two divided the project into stages, and they handled each stage together successively. The third team was to use a traditional hierarchical method where a leader was to head the team and direct all the processes of the Project (Crawford & Robertson, P. 9-11).
Managing Technology
The results based on consumer votes showed that cookies baked by the traditional method team were the most preferred 45%, followed by open source cookie, 41%, and extreme programming cookie, which got 14% of the votes. The XP method was the fastest method because members easily agreed on the process, and the content of the cookie and its cookie met all the instructions set at the beginning. The open sources had many disagreements, which led it to take the longest time. However, that helped in enhancing problem-solving skills. The traditional method depended mainly on the expertise of the leader. Hence when he was stuck, the whole group was stuck (Crawford & Robertson, P.12-14).
Bibliography
Crawford, Robber. J. and Robertson David. A New recipe for innovation.Harvard Business Review. 2006. Web.