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Product Management

Team Culture and Hybrid NPD Processes

Culture is one of those words that we all know what it means, yet we struggle to identify and name it.  Team and organizational cultures are best characterized from those within the group.  They might describe the culture as open and risk-tolerant or as hierarchical and lacking trust. 

New product development (NPD) is a systematic approach to convert nascent ideas into salable products and services.  Not every idea makes it to the marketplace nor should they.  We develop new products by taking advantage of new technologies and by combining concepts into new opportunities.  NDP is a fun arena in which to work because product managers can apply business knowledge, technical skills, and market research to drive success.

A Typical Hybrid NPD Process

Most product development professionals are familiar with waterfall or staged-and-gated process.  These approaches to NPD include upfront customer research and product design followed sequentially by prototype testing and manufacturing scale-up.  Thus, the term “waterfall” as each phase flows to the next with appropriate management approvals and team hand-offs.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are Agile processes that support project management of (primarily) software product development.  Scrum is the most widely deployed Agile methodology and uses short periods of collaborative teamwork to accomplish small tasks.  Flexibility is valued above planning, yet full Agile practices are difficult to successfully implement for NPD.

Hybrid NPD processes include WAGILE (read more here) and Lean NPD (read more here).  These processes embrace the discipline of setting boundaries (e.g., gates or management reviews) while simultaneously supporting frequent experimentation and direct customer feedback.  Integrating the structure of waterfall approaches with the desire for continuous learning of Agile systems, hybrid NPD offers key benefits to product development such as improved speed-to-market and increased customer satisfaction.

Teamwork in a Hybrid Environment

Product development teams have their own culture, just as any group has its own culture.  For hybrid NPD processes, teams must actively collaborate to achieve a shared purpose.  This starts with trust.  In The Innovation ANSWER Book, we discuss the theory of intellectual trust and emotional trust.  Taking the necessary, calculated risks for NPD success requires teams built on emotional trust.  Let me give an illustration from the feline world.

Along with a number of our neighbors, we feed a handful of stray cats.  We’ve named them based on their looks and coloring, so we have “Ginger” and “Gray”, for instance.  Most of the strays give us only intellectual trust.  They wander by each person’s door, checking to see if food has been set out.  Yet, they are easily spooked if we walk too close to them or attempt to pet them.  They intellectually trust us to deliver food but are unwilling to take further risks.

However, a couple of the strays have built adequate emotional trust with the humans.  They meow at us and allow people to get close.  One neighbor has invited one in to watch television with her, have a snack, and then be on his way.  She has a cute collection of photos of the white cat.  Another of the strays was sitting outside my door one day with a beat-up cat I’d never seen before.  She trusted us to feed and help him back to good health. 

Team Trust and Hybrid NPD

Do your NPD teams have a culture of trust?    Are our teams willing to take risks or do they scatter like stray cats when the going gets tough?

Successful implementation of quicker and more effective hybrid NPD processes requires a high degree of emotional trust.  Management must trust their teams (within well-defined boundaries) to execute the development work in the best way they know how.  Team leaders must trust the process to balance risk of investment and speed.  Individual contributors trust their own excellence and commitment to growing a culture of disciplined, yet flexible, product development tools.

Learn More

Please contact me at [email protected] to learn more about hybrid NPD project team effectiveness.  

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The Culture of NPD Processes

We all know that culture influences business outcomes more than any other variable.  Great strategies must be translated into effective business plans and implemented at the operational level.  Yet, if there is a breakdown in communication as a result of cultural conflict, a great business strategy can fail mightily.

Having an open, accepting cultures paramount for success in innovation.  The ability to “fail” allows new product development (NPD) teams to take risks.  Without risks, there is no opportunity for innovative growth.  And, of course, growth drives learning.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking, “Yes, culture impacts innovation success, but what do I do about it?”  The answer is that every organization must adapt their NPD process to their culture.  When there is a logical match between organizational culture and the NPD process, strategic goals for innovation are readily achieved.

Different Organizational Cultures

Culture is an unwritten set of rules that dictate how a group of individuals interact.  At a societal level, Asian cultures are known for group consensus while American and European cultures are better known for independent actions.  There is no right or wrong culture; however, people’s behaviors will reflect the dominant culture.

The Prairie Dog Culture

Prairie dogs share a lot of their living space with other prairie dogs.  They mostly live underground within a complex network of tunnels.  Yet, a sentinel is posted who alerts the group to a threat at which point, the entire community responds as one – diving into the tunnels for safety.

The Lion Pride Culture

Lions, on the other hand, are fairly solitary animals in the wild.  Lion prides have a hierarchy that leads to the paternal head.  As in the movie, The Lion King, the head lion might make poor decisions, but the rest of the pride follows.  Similarly with a good decision, the pride follows along obediently.

Everything In-Between Culture

Of course, between the extremes of a prairie dog clan and a hierarchical lion pride are the vast majority of organizational cultures.  Some companies lean more heavily to one side than the other.  Yet, every organization has a distinctive culture that encourages (or discourages) innovation.

Culture and the NPD Process

One of the biggest challenges of Agile implementation for tangible product development, and in large corporations, is cultural change.  The Agile philosophy pushes decisions to the lowest levels in an organization.  However, many senior executives are threatened by their perceived lack of involvement in these day-to-day decisions.  They wonder how they can take responsibility for profit and loss, if they don’t control each and every decision.

Of course, this lack of trust results in a hierarchical decision framework.  From an innovation standpoint, these organizations find it impossible to adopt Agile processes.  Instead, fear of failure results in a review- and approval-heavy staged-and-gated processes.  It’s not unusual to see “half-gates” in these organizations, as senior leaders micromanage the decision points.

In my experience, hybrid NPD processes like WAGILE and Lean NPD, are excellent transitions for hierarchical organizations investigating improvements in speed-to-market.  WAGILE (read more here) is a great NPD process when the product managers have close communication and interaction with end-users and customers.  Lean NPD is a better approach for organizations that innovate in B2B or wholesale markets, relying on market research external to the core development team.

Culture is the Crown of Innovation

Culture not only drives strategy, but culture dictates the innovation process.  Risk-averse organizations are challenged to transition to Agile, regardless of their desire to do so.  Instead, adopting a hybrid waterfall-Agile NPD process allows the organization to design and deliver new products quicker, cheaper, and better while building on internal strengths.

Want to learn more?  Join the PMI CBC chapter on 17 May for a brief discussion of Project Management in New Product Development.  Register here for this free event.  Also join our monthly Product Development Lunch and Learn webinar on 13 June at 12 pm Central Time to learn more about Project Management for NPD Processes.  Register here. 

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Listening for Customer Needs

I’ve always been interested in how people differentiate “hearing” and “listening”.  I remember one of my Japanese colleagues warning me to get a commitment to action from the multi-national team because saying “Yes” in Japan only meant “I heard you”.  I’m guilty, too, of nodding and saying “Yes” occasionally when someone asks if I heard them.

Hearing is the mechanical process of sound waves entering our ears and being converted to electrical signals.  The electrical signal that registers in our brain allows us to “hear” speech, music, and traffic noises.  Animals also “hear” noises – my cat jumps a mile if you clap your hands during one of his many siestas!

Listening, on the other hand, is a qualitative and emotional response to the sounds we hear.  Listening requires an analysis and understanding of the words, a commitment to action, and/or a witty conversational response.  In new product development (NPD), we often refer to “listening to the voice of the customer” during upfront research.  We do not say we only “hear” the customer.  We say we “listen” to the customer – gathering the qualitative and emotional responses.

Gathering Customer Needs

Of course, in product development and product management, customer needs drive design and implementation.  As product development professionals, we also know that customers are challenged to accurately describe their needs.  It is often easier for a consumer to make a complaint or to offer platitudes than to specify needs and wants.  Interestingly, the voice of the customer is more about multi-channel listening than hearing sounds.

What is multi-channel listing in product development?  It is collecting data and information (the voice of customer, VOC) that reflects a customer’s needs and problems.  “Listening” may include focus groups, observation, or journaling.  In this case, listening includes all our senses, not just hearing.

Creative Listening

Some creative ways to gather customer needs include shadowing, A/B testing, and journey mapping.  Shadowing is a market research technique in which members of the product development team follow customers (or potential customers) while they conduct daily activities.  This allows the NPD team to observe all aspects of product usage as well as pain points and competitor product advantages.  Shadowing, like many VOC methods, can generate a lot of data.  So, the NPD team should be prepared with an analysis and sorting method in advance.

A/B testing can be direct or indirect.  Product designers test preference for one or another feature in the new product.  Alternatively, one set of customers is tested for acceptance of Feature A and another set is tested for acceptance of Feature B.  In this method, you will need to ensure the sample size is adequate for the expected data integrity.

Finally, customer journey maps (see last week’s post here) are a great way to connect the customers’ decisions and emotions with the steps taken to research, purchase, and use a new product.  Some organizations structure business functions around the typical steps in the customer journey map.  For example, a digital retailer organizes IT projects by webpage presentation (customer shopping), customer ordering domain, shipping, and returns.

Learn More

Listening is tricky business and even more challenging when our customers cannot explain -in words – what they seek as new product features and benefits.  We use market research and design thinking tools to listen to the “voice of the customer”.  Our skills as product development professionals include multi-channel listening, meaning we must hear and observe our customers interacting with a variety of product solutions.

Join me on 9 May 2022 for our free monthly Product Development Lunch and Learn webinar.  This month’s topic is 3 Creativity Tools and you can learn how to better “listen” for customer needs.  REGISTER HERE.

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Creativity In Product Development

What does “creativity” mean to you?  For me, my hobby of card-making is creativity.  I can combine different colors, textures, and patterns on a 5×7-inch canvas that I send with love to family and friends.

Of course, my work life also includes creativity.  Solving problems and coming up with unique answers is creative work, too.  However, like most adults, I often fail to equate “creativity” with trouble-shooting or any other of my day-to-day activities.  Yet, working in product development demands creativity from all professionals and disciplines to successfully generate products to the marketplace.

New Product Development

New product development (NPD) is a broad term covering the design of unique technologies to the introduction of an existing product into a new market.  Products span from the tangible (goods we touch, like cars or cell phones) to software and applications (search engines and instant messaging).  Product managers today are often responsible for identifying new customer needs to feed the product development pipeline.

Successful product managers and product development professionals link customer needs with novel and creative solutions.

Inspired By Creativity

To deliver delightful new product solutions to our customers, we must offer them creative products and services.  NPD teams use several different stimuli to understand customer needs and to identify creative solutions to those consumer problems.  For example, the customer journey map (downloaded a template here) is a creative tool to track customer behaviors and satisfaction throughout the product selection and purchase process.  The figure below shows another example of a customer journey map.

The customer journey map is one of my favorite tools to identify new product needs.  Sometimes, we can creatively solve a customer’s need by changing how we package, deliver or market a product instead of developing additional features and functions.  The customer journey map helps us identify these simple, non-technical opportunities.  Keeping things simple is highly valuable in NPD!

Another creativity tool I love to use with innovation teams is brainwriting.  While traditional brainstorming focuses on collaborative creativity, brainwriting first utilizes individual problem-solving to address NPD questions.  Brainwriting works by presenting a problem to a group of people, typically the innovation team.  Each individual, quickly and by himself, records a potential idea or concept.  After a short period of time (about 30 seconds), they pass their sheet of paper to the person sitting at their right.

This person then adds a new idea or builds on the first idea.  After another 30 seconds, the paper is passed to the right again.  This process repeats several times until perhaps a half dozen ideas are collected on each sheet of paper.  At that point, the page is returned to the originator who then selects the “best” idea.  These concepts are then shared and prioritized as in a traditional brainstorming session.

Creativity Tools in Practice

Please join me for the May Product Development Lunch and Learn session on 9 May 2022 at 12 pm CDT (1 pm EDT) to learn 3 Creativity Tools.  These webinars are free and full of dialogue with fellow NPD professionals and product managers.  REGISTER HERE.

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