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The Wagile Stages

This week’s blog continues our series on the Wagile product development process.  Wagile is a hybrid of traditional waterfall (“w-”) and Agile (-“agile”) systems.  The Wagile philosophy is to move fast, practice discipline, understand risk, engage customers, and provide autonomy. 

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Traditional Stages and Gates

In a conventional new product development (NPD) process, stages are defined intervals where work gets done.  Gates are used as decision points – does the project advance to the next stage of work?  The advantage of a staged-and-gated framework for innovation projects is the discipline of a structured system.  Risk is managed because the investment in R&D or technology development is low when uncertainty is high (e.g. early stages). 

A common complaint of traditional NPD processes is that the system becomes overly bureaucratic.  Many managers recognize the inherent risk of innovation projects.  So, in the view of a risk-averse person or entity, knowing all the answers and planning for all contingencies upfront should eliminate risk.  Yet, this behavior drives costs of investigation and evaluation up without learning from failure.  Failure is perceived negatively. 

Scrum Artifacts and Meetings

Scrum, the most common implementation of Agile, uses increments of work called “sprints”.  Rather than defining specific task completions as in the traditional staged-and-gated framework, sprints are defined by time.  A typical Sprint last two to four weeks. 

The team works with the organization’s business analysts to determine what work tasks they can accomplish during each Sprint.  The idea is to have a deep focus on the highest priority features first. 

Risk is managed in Scrum by developing a minimally viable product (MVP).  The advantages that cost should be low by designing highest priority features early and avoiding “gold-plating” of products and services.  A challenge in Scrum is to define “done”, and my many features end up with gold-plating anyway. 

Another difference between Wagile and Scrum is when the team cannot complete the agreed-upon tasks within the sprint.  Activities then rollover to the next sprint, creating a backlog.  Sprint backlogs impact the overall project schedule and can cause delays in market launch. 

Wagile Stages

As we discussed in an earlier post, the Wagile gates are decision points in a project to move forward.  The plan for the next stage of work is approved at the gate review.  Stages of work in Wagile have two boundaries:  task completion and risk.  Schedule or project budget serves as a proxy for risk.  A stage is complete when either (1) the tasks are finished or (2) the schedule/budget is consumed.  Every stage has a set of required activities (standard) and a set of specific questions related to the individual project.  The Wagile stages are:

  1. Opportunity Identification,
  2. Business Case,
  3. Technology Development,
  4. Scale-Up, and
  5. Production.

Wagile Stage Activities

A key differentiator for Wagile versus other innovation processes is customer focus.  Stage-Gate™ was designed by Bob Cooper to include customer feedback but does not explicitly call it out.  Scrum uses the role of the Product Owner to represent the voice of customer.  Unfortunately, the Product Owner often presses internal demands for features and technology rather than the external needs of a target market.  In Wagile, each stage requires customer interaction via the Customer Representative role, tools, and tests. 

For example, in Stage 1 (Opportunity Identification), activities include Create, Trial, and Validate.  Both Trial and Validation require customer feedback.  These activities cannot be completed (or measured) without external data.  At Stage 1, however, these data are qualitative for the most part. 

Similarly, subsequent Wagile stages include required customer feedback activities of concept testing, technical functionality testing, prototype testing, and market testing.  Wagile stages are complete only when customer feedback is recorded.  In the situation where schedule or budget (project risk elements) are depleted before customer feedback is gathered, the project is re-evaluated through the Product Portfolio Management system.  Often, challenges in gathering customer feedback are symptoms of an unattractive project. 

Using Wagile  

Wagile stages, like conventional NPD process stages, are where work gets done.  Unlike a traditional system, recycle of activities and iteration of the new product or service idea is encouraged.  On the other hand, Wagile varies from Scrum (which also encourages utilizes iterative design) by installing hard barriers associated with customer feedback and risk. 

Ask yourself if your NPD process is balancing discipline with flexibility.  Are you getting the expected results within the desired time frame?  If not, it’s probably time to revamp your process.  Research shows that revitalizing your product innovation process with industry best practices leads to continued success.  And if you don’t have consistent customer feedback, flexibility, and discipline built into your NPD process, it’s time to become Wagile!  Join me on 11 November for a Wagile tutorial and right-size your product innovation workflows.  Register here. 

Learn More

Learn more about Wagile Product Development in my Webcast with PDMA on 10 September (register here).  Contact me at [email protected] for a complimentary 30-minute innovation coaching session. 

  • Check out where I’m speaking next (click here) and book me for your next event.
  • Get your copy of The Innovation ANSWER Book available at Amazon (now available on Kindle).
  • Vote on the cover of my next book, The Innovation QUESTION Book here.
  • Reference the new PDMA Body of Knowledge, available at Amazon.
  • Get your NPDP Certification!  Join our October online class (Thursdays) following the brand new, 2nd edition PDMA Body of Knowledge.  REGISTER HERE!

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and speaking at great professional events.  I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith.   It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders.  Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is an experienced innovation professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making.  My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator.  Contact me at [email protected] or area code 281 + phone 787-3979 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

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Doing Things Differently

The other day my husband went to the optometrist to get his vision checked and to order a new supply of contact lenses.  Because they dilated his eyes, I ended up driving his car on a series of errands that day.  Of course, I needed to adjust the seat since I’m shorter than he is, and I adjusted the mirrors as well.

Doctor Checking Patient’s Eyes

Later, that same week, my husband drove us to my church since we could not attend our church on Sunday morning.  He parked in a different place that I usually do and when we left, he took a different exit, requiring a U-turn (instead of a left turn) to return home.

We both were given different perspectives of routine tasks we do, tasks that are almost automatic.  And, of course, there’s no right answer or perfect parking place.  In fact, for people working as innovation leaders, it is actually very important to do things differently.

The Creativity Rut

Companies often become complacent in their success.  When a firm is young, all the staff works extra hard to bring the dream to life.  If it takes nights until midnight and entire weekends to print and package instructions for product usage, no one blinks an eye.  A founding team knows their hard work is what leads to success.

Yet after a company has a few market successes, it’s easy to get a bit lazy.  When we are at a high-point in the product life cycle – selling above the competition and garnering word-of-mouth referrals – it is easy to assume that we should keep on going on the same path.  Unfortunately, it is the repeated processes of small product improvements that lead to market erosion.  Advanced competitors will take advantage of a crowded marketplace full of “me-too” products.

Furthermore, as companies grow, they tend to put in place more systems and policies to minimize risk and maximize quality.  All of these factors lead to a creativity rut in which product development practitioners are rewarded for incremental improvements, and investment in radical ideas is limited.

Design Thinking to Do Things Differently

One way to break out of the creativity rut is to use customers in the design and development process.  I’ve observed many firms become afraid of leaking “confidential” information, so they move new product design and development into a restricted R&D department.  They can get lots of patents on new technologies, but they struggle to convert that technical know-how into customer desire.

All successful new product development (NPD) systems involve the customer, frequently and throughout the product development life cycle.  To do things differently, and to see a different perspective, you can implement a design thinking framework.

Discover

In the Discover phase of design thinking, NPD teams closely observe customers.  How do they use products today?  What challenges do customers face in solving problems?  What workarounds are in place to make something work better or more efficiently?

Several tools, like the customer journey map and customer empathy map, are available in design thinking to help elucidate customer needs.  Traditional market research tools, like surveys, focus groups, and interviewing, also help an NPD team identify the extent of a market need.

Define

The Define stage is tremendously important in any project.  Too often, we like to jump to the “fun” part of a project – solving the problem.  Yet, if we don’t carefully define the problem, we won’t know if we have solved it or if we have even addressed the right problem.

Design thinking offers a whole set of prioritization tools and models to help an NPD team characterize customer needs identified in the Discover stage.  While you don’t want to overemphasize financial outcomes, product solutions must be profitable, so this metric is included as part of the Define stage.  However, you can use a scoring metric that estimates and compares costs and benefits of potential product solutions rather than doing a full-blown NPV analysis.  In the early stages of product development, you want to see things differently and accept change.

Create

While there is often a lot of recycle between the Discover and Define stages to ensure an accurate understanding of customer needs, there’s no substitute for building and testing prototypes.  In the Create stage of the design thinking framework, the NPD team – along with the customer – will brainstorm as many potential ideas as possible to solve the problem.  This is definitely a phase where you want to see and do things differently!

For example, instead of booking airlines, hotels, rental cars, and admission tickets through separate companies, Expedia, Kayak and other websites let you book a whole trip at once.  The developers saw and did things differently, based upon what customers wanted and what they showed as obstacles on their customer journey maps.  Eliminating steps is a great way to do things differently and improve the customer experience.

Test

Testing in design thinking often involves prototyping.  Prototypes might be built for only a few features or as a mock-up of the whole product or service.  What’s crucial is to learn what customers like and don’t like.  And the best way to do that is to give them something different to try.

It turns out that the seat position in my husband’s car was programmed to match his key fob.  So, after his normal vision returned, the seat moved backward to the preferred position for someone with long legs.  Unfortunately, the mirrors were tied to the car’s memory, so we learned, by testing, that they had to be manually reset.  While it was only a small inconvenience, vehicle manufacturers can build this feature in to delight customers and offer a product advantage over competitors.

As an aside, my new car has a feature for automatically folding side mirrors.  But this feature is only available in Canada.  A design thinking approach to new product development might just reveal that American customers desire auto-folding mirrors as much as Canadians.  I will continue to puzzle over how this feature design was decided!

Use Design Thinking to Do Things Differently

Continually seeing things the same way can limit our creativity.  An internally-focused, risk-averse approach to innovation leaves product design at the whim of competitors and will lead to market erosion.  On the other hand, involving customers in the design and development process of new products and services yields a satisfying experience for them.  Design thinking brings value-added tools to the new product development process that increase the focus on customer needs and user involvement so that products are launched faster and better.

Learn More

I am speaking on open innovation and design thinking at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Spring Meeting in New Orleans on 1 April (Management Division).  Coupling these tools with flexible design, you can ensure that customer satisfaction is the primary outcome of any new product development effort.

Do you want to see things differently?  We are holding a special workshop on Agile NPD on 23 & 24 April 2019 in Houston, Texas, USA.  Register here for the 2-day Agile NPD workshop and save on a full 3-day experience including a one-day pre-workshop course on Design Thinking.  Use code “bundle” at checkout and save 15% on both courses.  Contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717 for more information on innovation, project management, and leadership training or coaching.  I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations achieve their highest innovation goals!

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A Three-Pronged Approach to Stakeholder Analysis

Engineering, project, and product managers deal with a wide variety of stakeholders.  Some stakeholders are customers or clients, receiving the products and deliverables of our work.  Other stakeholders are fellow team members, working with us to achieve project objectives and business goals.  Finally, other stakeholders serve in functional and support roles with whom we negotiate for resources and guidance to reach desirable outcomes.

Regardless of a stakeholder’s role, engineering, project, and product managers will build the relationship using a three-pronged approach.  Stakeholder relationships require care and nurture for a project to succeed.  Successful, engaging stakeholder relationships are built on three key tenets:

  1. Effectiveness,
  2. Efficiency, and
  3. Satisfaction.

Effectiveness

Effectiveness is defined by Dictionary.com as “providing an adequate or appropriate outcome.”  Engineering, project, and product managers incorporate effectiveness measures in our work to ensure that we deliver the products and results promised in a project charter.  Moreover, effectiveness demonstrates meeting scope, schedule, cost, and quality goals.

Project stakeholders focus on effectiveness during the initiation of a project.  In new product development (NPD), for example, effectiveness measures will define feature sets of the new product so that customer requirements can be met.  A product must be easy to use by its target market and should include certain plug-and-play features.  Customer requirements may specify that a product is offered in different colors or different sizes.  Packaging is another element of product design in which customers request specific features and attributes.

Customer and stakeholder requirements are usually gathered during the early planning phases of a project.  Engineering, project, and product managers will convert stakeholder needs and expectations into specific, measurable product requirements.  As the project progresses, managers will measure effectiveness in meeting project goals against these deliverable metrics.  Thus, project effectiveness is determined by meeting the project scope.

Efficiency

Studies show that project schedule is a greater determinant of project success than any other variable.  A project that is further behind schedule will suffer a greater cost hit than will a project that is just slightly delayed.

Efficiency is a management variable that will measure implementation of the project schedule and evaluate it against the plan.  Engineering, project, and product managers have a whole suite of tools available to determine efficiency, namely, variance analysis.

Earned value management (EVM) is a common project management tool that compares the actual project schedule against the plan.  Any significant gaps or trends are noted, and the project manager can take steps to reduce the impact of a schedule delay.  EVM is an especially good tool for project efficiency because it not only examines the project execution to date, but it also allows an accurate forecast to predict project completion based on current performance levels.

Satisfaction

The third prong of managing stakeholder relationships is satisfaction.  Customer satisfaction can mean a lot of different things to various groups of stakeholders, so it is imperative that engineering, project, and product managers define satisfaction early in the project design phase.  Simply delivering a product on-time and on-budget will not meet the definition of customer satisfaction.

One element of customer satisfaction that is relatively easy to measure is repeat business.  Engineering and project managers can use repeat usage of tools and templates as a stand-in for repeat business while product managers will measure repeat sales.  Regardless of the specific measurement, returning customers and end-users signal customer satisfaction.

An Example

Let’s take an example of an internal software development project to create an online experience for employees to engage their mandatory training criteria.  The project may be effective in that it delivers a software tool available to all employees.  The project can meet its scope of work requirements by creating an internet-based training delivery mechanism available globally at each work site.

Further, the project may be executed efficiently.  Given a 3-month window in which to design, develop, and implement the software training tool, the project team can measure and meet the schedule goals.  A software training program delivered in 13 weeks would be considered efficient in this case.

Yet, if the end-user stakeholders (customers) find the training software difficult to use or hard to navigate, customer satisfaction is not met.  When the employees avoid using the tool or complain about access issues, the project is not successful.  Customer satisfaction is a key element of building a successful stakeholder relationship.

On the other hand, if employees use the software training tool without significant prompting and return to use the tool as a source of knowledge to support their job function, the project can assess a highly positive level of customer satisfaction.  Such repeat usage (or purchase) metrics are very easy to gather.

A Three-Pronged Approach to Managing Stakeholders

Engineering, project, and product managers need to build long-lasting and interactive relationships with stakeholders to assure project success.  The three elements most important to stakeholder management are effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.  Effectiveness is measured by scope of work and delivering a product that meets customer requirements.  Efficiency is measured by delivering the results of the project on time to the internal customer and by reaching the right market at the right time for external customers.

Finally, customer satisfaction can be measured by repeat purchase or repeat usage.  A satisfied stakeholder, whether s/he is a functional manager or external client, will demonstrate satisfaction by returning for additional business.  Satisfied stakeholders positively assess the quality of interaction with the product or service.

To learn more about project stakeholders and customer usage, check out self-study and other NPDP Workshops.  Feel free to contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717.  At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications.  You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

 

Reading Recommendation

Any of a number of general project management textbooks provide guidance on managing stakeholder expectations and customer requirements, including Successful Project Management by Gido and Clements or Project Management:  The Managerial Process by Larson and Gray.

More specific to NPD is a book called Sense and Respond encouraging the interaction with customers and project teams to develop successful new products.  We also discuss the role of customers and stakeholders in NPDP Certification Prep:  A 24-Hour Study Guide and additional references at https://globalnpsolutions.com/services/npd-resources/.

 

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

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A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Defining the CRM

CRM – we hear about this term a lot lately, but what is it and how can we use CRM to influence successful new product development/

CRM is the acronym for customer relationship management.  Very often it is implements as a technology to collect data about customers and is used primarily by the sales force.  In practice, we can identify at least two other implementations of CRM at a function level and at a strategic level.  Let’s take a look at each of these.

Technology-Driven CRM

Big data and the opportunity to gather vast amounts of data, such as web page viewing, click-through behavior, and purchase histories, have led to the creation of many functional CRM systems.  These CRM systems are driven by technology and have a limited use.  Often, the CRM is used only to automate sales force functions or to manage promotions and campaigns.

Analysis of CRM data to inform new product development is lacking in a technology-driven system.  Companies may invest significant capital and IT resources to install CRM systems.  Yet, the stored data is often neglected so that the return on investment is far less than expected.  This leads to severe disappointment in the CRM and executives continue to search for ways to collect consumer insights.  The CRM thus becomes a wasted resource.

Level 1 CRM

A Level 1 CRM utilizes the data collected through the IT application and shares the information to build a consistent customer view across several functions.  Companies deploying a Level 1 CRM recognize the importance of coordinating customer and segment knowledge to deliver a unified customer experience.

Functions involved in a Level 1 CRM might include sales, marketing, customer service, technical service, warranty, and maintenance.  Each department will have access to the CRM database showing a customer’s purchase and claim history.

The idea behind a Level 1 CRM is to focus on the total customer experience.  A firm will recognize the customer throughout the purchase process from decision-making, buying, and after-sales support.  In some industries, a Level 1 CRM can be differentiating.

Strategic CRM

A strategic CRM system goes beyond Level 1 by integrating the customer experience throughout the new product development process.  We might prefer to call a strategic CRM “CVM” – or customer value management.

At the strategic level, customer viewpoints, reactions, and interactions are integrated into all business processes.  CRM is not simply a data collection tool but a warehouse of information and knowledge to inform business decisions of a customer-centric organization.  All the functions involved in a Level 1 customer experience analysis are included in a strategic CRM, but also involved are R&D, engineering, operations, and supply chain.

These cross-functional teams study and observe customer behaviors to validate stated and unstated customer needs.  Customers are queried throughout the NPD process to verify new concepts and new product features and functionalities.  Strategic CRM focuses on processes that span department boundaries in order to select customers and products that will deliver the most value to the frim.

Using CRM

Companies most successful with Strategic CRM use their intimate knowledge of customers and segments to design and develop future products as well as to understand current needs.  Strategic customer value analysis includes evaluation of societal trends influencing customer behaviors as well as segment and industry activities.  This is the difference between transactional sales management and customer relationship management.  Having a direct dialog with customers provides a qualitatively differentiated product and service solution for customers, giving the firm a competitive advantage.

How do you use CRM in your company?  If it is currently a technology-driven sales tool, dig into the existing data to mine it for new customer insights.  The sales force often has the highest level of interaction and communication with your customers and will document reactions to new product concepts in the CRM.  Understanding thoughts, opinions, and desires of your existing and potential customers can lead to valuable insights for NPD.

You can learn more about building lasting relationships with customers in an NPDP workshop where we discuss specific marketing tools and techniques for new product development.  Contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717 to enroll in a free NPDP overview course or any of our newly scheduled PMP, Scrum, or NPDP workshops in Houston as well as our online PDH courses.  At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications.  You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

 

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

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A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC