Fast Time To Market
In the early 1990s, lateralworks conducted an extensive multi-company study involving over 500 people who worked on fast-to-market projects in Silicon Valley. Since then, they have worked with hundreds of teams to accelerate the delivery of new technology products to market. The research continues today to keep the best practices current.
This podcast series will share many of the practices that teams use to deliver the right product to the market at the right time.
Fast Time To Market
FTTM is not Project Management - A debate (Part C)
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In Part C of Episode 5 of the “FTTM is not Project Management” debate, the conversation gets practical: the hosts dig into where the line actually is between “FTTM” work and traditional Project Management work, why people keep mashing the roles together, and what breaks when you do. Expect pointed pushback, real-world examples, and a few “okay, but then who owns that?” moments, ending with takeaways you can use to clarify responsibilities, set better expectations, and stop the same arguments from looping forever.
Here are the top 3 differences (FTTM = Fast Time To Market) versus traditional Project Management:
- The goal: “pull-in” vs “hold the plan”
FTTM is explicitly about finishing sooner—a continuous effort to accelerate the schedule and hit the market window (“right product, right time”). Traditional PM is usually about delivering to the baseline (scope/schedule/cost), and a lot of the machinery is built around managing variance once it appears. - How the schedule is used: driver vs reporting artifact
In FTTM, the schedule is the driver of behavior: it’s built to show the gap between the target date and the “real” finish date early, and it’s used to create urgency and action. In traditional PM, the schedule often degrades into a status/reporting tool (updated for governance, not to actively change how the team works day-to-day). - Cadence + ownership: daily team refresh vs PM-centric coordination
FTTM emphasizes full team involvement, daily refresh planning (update → break down → pull-in), and trend tracking so the team can react before the slip (not after). It also pushes cross-silo integration (“lateralized” workflows tied to customer deliverables) rather than functional handoffs. Traditional PM more commonly runs on periodic updates, hierarchical decision-making, and coordination across silos.
