NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

1. Describing a New Product

In the development of software systems, software engineers argue over the description of a new product.  This argument primarily occurs over the maintenance of existing systems and how to test them.  For a few system thinkers, any alteration to a software product establishes a new system because the alteration establishes a new experience of that product.  For others, the purist, a software product becomes a new product only when it is first designed.  Subsequent changes are only versions of an existing product.  Depending on perspective, both are correct.

2. Introducing New Product Development, Part One

This series explores the new product development process.  As a model for your own NPD program, it presents a plan of action (PoA) for new product development which links the core business processes of an enterprise, such as manufacturing and marketing, to the new product development processes.  This series expands upon the program management approach introduced in earlier E-Books in my professional development series and discusses an executive level model of decision support essential to developing new products. Each task highlighted in the Plan of Action consists of the most essential reviews, checkoffs, and decisions necessary to lead the product development process.

3. Introducing New Product Development, Part Two

In addition to the charter, the corporate strategic mission also plays a role in NPD for several crucial business reasons. If these reasons are urgent enough, such as the need to reflect the emerging business realities of the day, executive management may consider modifying the strategic direction of the company and updating the charter.  Such changes in corporate vision do not occur hastily. Executives demand strong reasons for even entertaining such change.

4. Identifying the Obstacles to New Product Development Success

During the course of NPD, many influences impact decision making.  These influences emerge from the business and political environments.  More directly, however, friction arises in the market and its segmentation.  Management expects to receive friction from the competition, trade groups, suppliers, and other stakeholders. NPD and friction are inseparable.

5. Designing the New Product Development Environment

New Product Development is a process that takes ideas, tries them out, and transforms them into products that have market appeal and offer competitive leverage.  Successful NPD occurs within a highly specialized environment that receives matter, energy, and information as inputs from an external environment and directs these inputs the NPD transformation process to obtain new products as outputs from the process.  NPD functions in an internal environment and exchanges matter, energy, and information with an external environment.

5.Using Innovation to Prepare the New Product Development Environment, Part One

You can see, the tone of this E-Book is resistance and innovation.  Because of the way they manage resistance, some organizations innovate better than others. Whatever the organization’s level of innovation happens to be, however, its propensity to innovate will impact its New Product Process (NPD).

6.Using Innovation to Prepare the New Product Development Environment, Part Two

Continuing the development of new products makes little sense if you carelessly attempt to enter the marketplace.  Business is high gear competition.  Success, therefore, demands well tested concepts, carefully built plans, abundant innovation, product acceleration, and the formulation of insightful rules of business wisdom.  For market entry, this means that management attains the requisite competence in market entry decision making.

7.Justifying Configuration Management for Competitive Success

Although many people view CM as a discrete technical activity, or a purely clerical function, and occasionally a management task, its impact on an enterprise is more substantial. In reality, CM impacts the larger organization through its network of relationship with affiliated management processes.  Foremost among this network is the influence CM conveys as a component of Systems Management.

8.Mastering the Space of Configuration Management

This E-Book series introduces Configuration Management and it processes from concept to execution.  I intend this E-Book series to improve your performance in leading, designing, and managing the Configuration Management environment in your workplace.  Bringing Structural Capital to the refinement of your Configuration Management environment, this E-Book series enables you to better establish and implement an appropriate Configuration Management environment to support all product development activities within your organization and formalize relationships with senior managers and executives.

9. Implementing New Products

After making the appropriate market entry decisions, management either elects to alter the timing window, modify the product, go with the entry, or not go with the product.  If management decides to launch the product, a series of designed actions commence to link NPD, forecasting, and marketing programs.  We generally refer to this critical series of actions as launch implementation.

10.Managing Bias in New Product Development

At the end of each section, you will discover a few Action Assignments. You complete these for your own benefit. We developed these to assist you in transferring the content of the course to your work environment and to facilitate learning transfer so that you may become increasingly competent in what you do.  “What you learn today, you can use tomorrow,” means something real to us at SMI. 

11.Navigating the Successful Proposal Process, Part One

Continuing the development of new products makes little sense if you carelessly attempt to enter the marketplace.  Business is high gear competition.  Success, therefore, demands well tested concepts, carefully built plans, abundant innovation, product acceleration, and the formulation of insightful rules of business wisdom.  For market entry, this means that management attains the requisite competence in market entry decision making.

12.Navigating the Successful Requirements for Proposal Process, Part Two

The proposal process basically consists of a problem on one side in the guise of the client or customer, and a solution on the other in the guise of the consultant or vendor.  Most often, a client requests a vendor to respond and the vendor responds.  At a very high lunar level, the proposal process is as simple as this.

15.Designing the New Product Development Decision Support System

Decision Support Systems, herein referred to as DSS, enable organizations to manage the disparate influences of stakeholders.  They enable organizations to collect, analyze, categorize, and include stakeholder influence, along with other internally generated data, into NPD decision making.

16.Unifying New Product Development with Forecasting and Scenario Setting

Organizations continuously struggle with the challenge of determining the real versus perceived demand for their new products.  Sometimes initial sales may be brisk while later sales slow.  Or initial sales may be slow while later sales brisk.  At other times, sales may be always slow or always brisk.  Timing obviously plays a role, we all know this.  But beyond timing, many other variables also impact the rate of sales.  Forecasting is not about absolutes; it is about making educated plans for production.  During NPD, important questions arise that require answers which can be provided through forecasting and scenarios setting.