The initial part of a project—before approval has been given or full staffing is allocated—has been called the fuzzy front end, and this stage can consume a great deal of time.
High-volume industries will often define the end point in terms of reaching a certain production volume, such as a million units per month.
Some companies have been successful in putting their products into categories of newness, but establishing levels of complexity remains elusive.
TTM may be improved (shortened) by skipping steps of the development process, thus compromising product quality.
Skipping a step—due to perceived time pressure, for example—may not only undercut quality but can ultimately lengthen TTM if the organization must complete or repeat the step later.
The first recorded conference on Time-to-Market was organized by Bart Hall of AiC and held on 25 and 26 October 1995 at the St James Hotel in London.