Creating Poject Plans to Focus Product Development

Creating project plans to focus product development

Example of PreQuip, late product development , delays in project, managers faced pressure to cut corners and compromise quality just to keep their projects moving forward. Why??

They chose projects because engineers found the technical problems challenging  or because customers or the marketing department requested them. As long as there was money in the budget or the person making the request had sufficient clout , the head of the department had no option but to accept additional projects requests.

50% of their time working on non-project related work. They spent too little time developing the right new products experimenting with new technologies or addressing new markets.

PreQuip’s story is hardly unique. They were not working hard to pursue the projects aimed for catching up to their competitors. They spend too much time dealing with short term pressures and not enough time on the strategic mission of product development.

Companies need to devote more attention to managing the set and mix of projects. By mapping the project types, managements can see where gaps exist in the development strategy and make more informed decisions about what types of projects to add and when to add them.

Aggregate plan will enable management to improve the way it manages the development function. Management needs to create a set of projects that is consistent with the company’s development strategies rather than selecting individual projects from a long list of ad hoc proposals.

Indeed, the most companies like PreQuip should start the reformation process by eliminating or postponing the lion’s share of their existing projects eventually supplanting them with a new sets of projects that fits the business strategy and the capacity constraints.

How to map projects

The first step: define and map the different types of development projects, this gives information about how resources should be allocated.  The two thing: degree of change in the product and the degree of change in the manufacturing process. The greater the change along either dimension, the more resource are needed.

Five types of projects: derivative, breakthrough, platform, research and development.  Each of the five project types requires a unique combination of development resource and management styles.

Derivative projects: range from cost-reduced versions of existing products to add-ons or enhancements for an existing production process. Example, Kodak’s wide angle using the no-frills fun saver introduced in 1990. Because the change is minor, incremental process change like lower cost manufacturing process, little change or no change in product , the incremental projects ate more clearly bounded and requires substantially fewer development resources the other categories.

Breakthrough projects:  they involve significant changes to existing products and processes. They create whole new product category that can define a new market.  They often require revolutionary manufacturing processes. They should focus on developing new technologies.

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