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Product development process
Why do you need a product development process? Quite simply
it controls the costs and time taken to develop a new product.
More importantly it helps your organisation to look on product
development as investment rather than risk.
When you examine companies that succeed in product development
(3M, Sony, Black & Decker, Polaroid) they have one thing
in common, the development is divided into a number of stages.
Because this article discusses products in their widest sense,
covering not only hard products but services as well, we have
created an idealised set of stages that should be applicable
no matter your industry or the size of your project.
The process
Creativity
How do you continually come up with new ideas for your business?
How do you develop new ways of attacking problems? How do
you capture and assess these ideas and distil them down to
the ones that are worth investing more time and effort in?
Defining the Concept
How do you turn an idea into a real business opportunity
and determine the necessary investment and expected return?
This requires a number of questions to be answered. What is
the market potential? Is it technically feasible? What are
the timescales? How will it effect existing products? How
will the competition react? And so on. On this information
the decision to go ahead and invest will be made.
Developing the Concept
Typically the early part of this stage looks at defining
the customer requirements, followed by the translation into
some form of prototype or pilot service. The key is that perceived
customer needs are translated into a possible solution to
these needs. In reality the design or development of the product
or service will continue into subsequent stages as the product
or service is refined to the point that is released to the
market.
Testing and Finalising the Concept
This is sometimes referred to as alpha and beta testing of
products. It is the controlled release of the product so that
the sales, customer, manufacturing and support organisations
can test and modify the product. One outcome of this stage
could be that the concept was wrong, there is no market, and
the product should stop prior to committing to the expense
of releasing it into the market.
Full Product Launch
This is probably one of the most difficult and expensive
stages. It includes developing the market, the correct sales
channels, ramping up the volume of business and supporting
the product.
Managing the Life Cycle
Managing the decline of a product, or extending its life
with a "mid life kicker", is often not considered.
Unfortunately when this activity is not planned the need to
develop new products is often triggered by falling sales.
At this point there may not be enough time for new products
to be developed.
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