Product Development
As a technical professional, I tend to think of the Product Development Process, also known as New Product Development, as the creation of the product technology through to a working unit that can then be manufactured. And of course managing risk to Improve Product Development Outcomes. The only thing wrong with this picture is that this is only a part of the overall process of bringing a new product to market. So I’ve put a diagram together that shows a more complete picture.
Product Development Process
One thing I noticed when I did this is that there were four areas that had the most influence on the overall process. These are:
- design capability
- development capability
- funding
- production capability
And of these, the ones that had the most influence were:
- funding
- development capability
Products Have Stakeholders
A successful product is successful within a market and has multiple stakeholders. A developers, we might not be as aware of all these stakeholders as we could be. For instance, a product must not only work from the technical performance perspective, but it must also work from the perspective of the manufacturer, the sales person, the installer, the service technician, the shareholders, those tasked with public safety and clear mobile communications, those who have to dispose of the product at its end of life and of course the end user. That is a lot of people to please. And they aren’t all on the chart above either.
This is why exceptionally good Product Development is not just a case of following a specific methodology. So we are mostly involved in the Product Development Process but it does help a lot to see that there is a bigger picture and that even if you do a good job technically, it is just one of the the ducks you need to line up in order to get all your ducks in a row and a successful product into the market and making money and adding value to everyone.
Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2014 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.
