Process Template: Product Development

 

 

Leading Edge companies follow a phased gate review process for product development that ensures that each phase of the process meets the intented customer, financial  and strategic goals for the project. At each gate review, the project team demostrates that the requirements of the phase have been met and acquires senior management approavl to move ahead. Higher risk projects have gate reviews at each phase, lower risks projects follow a "Fast Track" and formal gate reviews at the end of key phases such as feasibility and release.

 

The projects in the development pipeline in the start with Generate and Select Ideas phase. Working with opportunities identified in the planning phase, ateam conducts "informed ideation". A review of all ideas is held to select the most promising ideas.

 

Selected ideas enter Develop Winning Concepts phase. During this phase, the team link important customer needs to technology building blocks, identifies missing technologies, and sketches an intitial business case for the project - a preliminary business plan of record. The "Concept Gate Review" at the end of this phase allows the team to present its case, along with a project plan.

 

The next phase Determine Feasibility, requires a more in depth look at the business, market, and technical feasibility of the project, By this time, the new product team, which may have been working with only a few people, will have full cross functional representation with the needed skils and experince to deliver the product to market. During this phase, additional market resesrch may be conducted along technology studies. It is critial that the relatively small costs of good research and knowledge generation be expended at this time, becuase in the next phase, the company will be committing major resources, often including capital expenditures, to the project. The Feasibility Gate Review is the most critial review in the product development cycle. If a project is going to be cancelled, it should be done at or before this review: to cancel projects later wastes resources.

 

Design and Develop Products phase involves a cross functional team doing the actual work of designing and developing the product,. Enggineering, manufacturing, marketing, other functions as well and frequently, partner, suppliers, and customers must work together to ensure that the product that is being developed will hit targets for cost, schedule and performance.