Cycle Time Reduction

In today\´s competitive market, customer needs quick solutions with minimum cost, with out compromising the quality. Five years back, the average project cycle time was 4 to 6 months (was measured in months) and currently it is between 8 to 16 weeks (is measured in weeks). In near future, this will be measured in days. There is a need for quick decisions, earlier we used to say "no decision is better than a wrong decision ", but now it is "any decision is better than no decision ". The cycle time reduction (CTR) can only be possible by quick turn around in the project. This introduces challenges like running many activities in parallel (multiple critical paths). This implies increased risks in the project, increased stress on the project team, increased communication channels leading to complex communication issues, reduced time frame to adapt to the changes and many more. This in turn might impact on the company\´s business in the longer run. This paper provides a list of approaches practiced to achieve the challenge of reducing software project cycle time.