Product Development Optimization

The product development group within a growing mid-sized communications company needed more effective execution to improve throughput and ensure timely delivery of new products to market.

Management had drafted a revised product development process around major development steps with the objective of aligning development efforts across several different technologies. Revised process had not been implemented.

The product development organization required training and coaching on the practical execution of the new product development process.

We reviewed the revised product development process and supporting tools, compared them to best practices and identified additional areas for improvements.

For two areas needing significant improvement, project planning and requirements management, we conducted three half-day working sessions that included training on best practices as well as the practical application of those best practices on existing projects.

We identified three pilot projects to test the revised product development process and coached the project managers through implementation of the new process.

Working with the management team, we defined the key capabilities that product development project managers needed to have in order for new process to be successful.

After completing the project planning and requirements management working sessions, the performance of the project managers in these areas improved significantly resulting in higher customer satisfaction from project teams as well as senior management.

After completion of the pilot projects, project managers felt comfortable implementing the new product development process with their other projects, enabling the successful roll-out of the new process.