new product development

Product Design Process

Posted on 06.25.20

New products do not magically appear overnight. Despite our collective image of a lone scientist working over a smoldering beaker of neon-colored fluid, most innovations are born of a rigorous process. In fact, studies show that firms with flexible product design processes generate repeatable new product success more than their competitors who approach innovation in an ad-hoc manner.

Watch the short overview video and then read the full blog for details.

Often called the new product development (NPD) process or product innovation process, a product design process takes the innovation team on a journey. We must first identify what strategic needs our customers have, what problems trouble them, and how we can help them solve those problems efficiently. The product design process delivers both steps to advance innovation as well as a set of tools to understand and quantify customer needs.

Steps in The Product Design Process

Most product development processes focus on the deliverables. In Stage X, you must have a fully fleshed-out business case. At Phase Y, you need to have built a functional prototype. What’s different about the product design process is that it focuses on actions that lead new product innovation from rigorous ideas to commercial products.

Step 1 – Ideation

Ideation is a creative process to generate, develop, and communicate new ideas. It involves searching for customer problems and defining the problem space. The two categories of tools deployed in ideation are divergent thinking and convergent thinking.

Divergent thinking tools seek to expand the question and derive alternate concepts. Sometimes we misinterpret a customer’s problem through our own biases (please see the blog on Optimism Bias). Other times, we jump to solutions without considering the whole scope of the problem. This can make products overly complex while they do not satisfy customers most basic needs. Consider the long list of micro-print included with prescription drugs. The warnings might be justified, but an 80-year old patient with macular degeneration cannot possibly determine appropriate dosage.

In convergent thinking, we take the creative ideas and solutions generated by cross-functional teams and collate them. The purpose of this step in the design process is to find common themes or concepts that will address large market segments so that we can move forward in the product design process. It is impossible – and fraught with risk and expense – to pursue all ideas.

Step 2 – Concept Design

Concept design introduces clarity and alignment for the product. It provides a way to explain what the product will do, how it will function, and how it will solve the customer’s problem. Often the concept design is a simple narrative description or sketch. This yields high-level feedback from customers to validate that the problem definition is correct. When organizations skip this step, they end up designing and selling products that only almost solve a customer’s problem. Unfortunately, this leaves a big gap for competition to fill with a better product that satisfies customer needs with better quality.

Step 3 – Embodiment

As a product moves from concept design into more detailed design, a product innovation team accounts for technical and economic feasibility. Customers will exchange hard earned money for products that offer convenience, simplification, or luxury experiences. The embodiment of the product must balance the features and attributes of the design against cost of manufacturing and, ultimately, the selling price.

Conjoint analysis is a common tool used at this stage of the product design process. This tool allows customers to rank and prioritize a select set of features against prices. The outcome of a conjoint analysis provides the product innovation team with a list of the most important features that must be included in a final product. Results of the study are important since it links desired features and quality levels with willingness to pay.

Step 4 – Draft Product Specifications

At this point in the design process, the “what” and “why” of the product are well defined. The next step is to determine “how”. The initial product specifications lay out physical dimensions and manufacturability. A key tool in this phase is D4X, or Design for X, where X may represent assembly, maintenance, or usability.

The expected outcome of the draft product design specification stage is to quantify and clarify the product design. Communication of the purpose of the product, quality levels of individual features, and the cost/benefit of the product are also important outcomes. Since the next stage is determining final product development and manufacturing methods, the draft product design specifications should be complete and reflect all key characteristics that the product must deliver.

Step 5 – Detailed Design

A primary tool in the detailed design process is QFD (Quality Function Deployment). This methodology converts the draft design specifications into specific manufacturing and engineering criteria. In other words, QFD translates the customer needs into measurable requirements. QFD is a sophisticated tool with matching, prioritization, and scaling of customer needs, competitive responses, and design attributes, combined with cost to create engineering metrics for new product manufacturing. QFD originated in the automotive industry and uses a graphic called the House of Quality. (Read more in the blog post Innovation Tools: What is QFD?)

Step 6 – Final Production

Sometimes called “Fabrication and Assembly”, the last step in the design process for new product development is manufacturing and producing the product. This includes prototype testing, market testing, and systems integration. Prototype testing ensures that the product works as it was designed to work and meets customer needs. Companies should test a variety of prototypes from those with just a few relevant features (e.g. the minimally viable product, MVP) to a high-fidelity working prototype. It is less expensive to modify the manufacturing and distribution process is before finalizing specifications and production moves to large scale.

The Product Design Process

The product design process does not replace a traditional or emergent project management process (like Stage-Gate® or Scrum). Instead, product design lies parallel to the project management decisions. Product design forces enhanced communication and interaction with customers resulting in better overall product designs and reception in the marketplace. While we have only briefly touched on some of the important product design tools here, you can read about them in depth in the comprehensive text, Product Design and Innovation by Carlos Rodriguez. He includes a lot of very thorough examples to lead you through the entire product design process.

How Do You Use Product Design?

Every industry, company, and product is different. You may know your market well, so that a new product simply needs limited design and testing. Or you may be developing brand new technology and need to conduct extensive testing with potential and existing customers to ensure strategic alignment. In this case, you will want to explore more of the product design phases and tools with more depth.

The most important part of any product innovation processes to ensure strategic business alignment. Developing product strategy precedes the product design process. Start with our Reset Your Strategy workshop in August 2020. Pre-register here. Contact me at info@globalnpsolutions.com for more information.

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About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching. 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 info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 787-3979 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Identifying Your New Innovation Workflow

Posted on 05.21.20

In a recent blog, we discussed how to Use SWOT to Reset Your Business and Innovation Strategy. As has been said, execution overrules strategy any day. Strategy is important because you have to know where you’re going and to explain why you’re headed there. But how you get there and when you get there is even more important.

I often think of strategy as a destination. An analogy is found in planning a vacation. The destination (for me) is often a National Park (where I’m going) so I can go hiking (why I’m going). The SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) yields insights to help in the decision-making process of laying out a business destination and innovation goals that will increase revenue and lead to customer satisfaction.

How I get to a National Park and the timing of vacation are related to workflows. I could fly to a nearby city and rent a car or drive to the park directly from home. Driving usually takes longer but allows me to easily carry bicycles and camping gear. In the end, flying or driving achieves the same goal – hiking in a beautiful place – but the execution of the plan is quite different for each case.

What is a Workflow?

We often don’t think a lot about workflows. Somehow work just gets done. If tasks or activities are behind schedule, someone calls a meeting to figure out why. But it is more efficient to establish processes upfront and follow a standardized path – a workflow – to achieve repeatable success. A workflow is thus a system or process.

Even for tasks and activities as unpredictable as developing a new product or service, we need a process that informs the project team how to convert an idea into a saleable product or service. The workflow illustrates a series of steps with assigned roles and responsibilities. The system also includes decision-making criteria to indicate whether a particular initiative should continue to advance. These decisions are particularly important for product innovation as trends in customer needs, markets, and technology can change during the development life cycle.

Workflow is NOT a Schedule

As good project managers, we always prepare project schedules. These include key milestones and deliverables. Innovation systems often use gate reviews to establish the continued attractiveness of a product idea through design and development. Product portfolio management reviews determine strategic alignment and value-add for innovation projects. The workflow captures these hand-offs and decision points as well as responsible team members to accomplish the work.

A schedule is different than a workflow in that it shows (often as a Gantt chart) which tasks must be done and in what order. A schedule shows overlaps in activities and highlights the critical path that determines the earliest possible completion date for a project. Project managers are held accountable for delayed schedules. In my vacation analogy, the airline has a specific schedule and if I miss the flight, my entire vacation is delayed.

Designing an Innovation Workflow

First, remembering that a workflow is not a schedule, list all the tasks that must be done to transform an idea into a product innovation. The list should include direct tasks (such as prototype testing) as well as indirect activities (such as applying for a patent). Next, as shown in the figure, order and prioritize these tasks to optimize the project goal. Remember that activities like concept testing can be conducted in parallel with technical development and production testing.

Innovation Workflow, copyright Global NP Solutions

As you begin to order the required tasks and activities, you will find that some are dependent on others. This is not unlike putting together a project schedule but as you create a workflow, you can identify methods to optimize your resources when you recognize a dependency. In scheduling, we must increase the time if Task A must be fully completed before Task B starts. Yet in a workflow, or systems analysis, we can collate certain dependent activities or decisions for a management council or portfolio review.

The workflow considers roles and responsibilities, skills and competencies, and training needs of functional staff to complete activities. An effective workflow identifies cross-functional relationships as well as cross-training for various roles so that the project work progresses continually. Then, when hold times or transfers and hand-offs are unacceptable, resource allocation is optimized to eliminate overload (Step 5).

As with all innovation projects, the innovation system itself should be tested. Prototype the workflow on a “typical” new product development (NPD) project to identify bugs, holdups, or bottlenecks in the workflow. Then, as you implement the workflow across all projects and functions, relentlessly streamline the process. Continuous improvement and being aware of bureaucratic sand traps is key to successfully maintaining optimized workflows.

Innovation Workflows

Learn more about the innovation workflow matrix here. You will see many of the common project and innovation management systems categorized by serial or integrated teams on the x-axis and via waterfall or Agile philosophy on the y-axis. Learn more about product innovation in New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification self-study course. Then, join me on 18 June 2020 at noon CDT (1 pm EDT, 10 am PDT) for a free Q&A webinar on the Life Design Master Mind group where you will apply the Design Thinking workflow to current challenges for knowledge workers maintaining full employment. Register here and we’ll see you soon!

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Mixed Skills for Work Today

Posted on 05.07.20

Watch the short summary (less than 1 minute) and then read the full article below.

At the Fall 2019 AIChE conference for chemical engineers, keynote speaker Matt Sigelman presented the importance of developing and supplementing skills forproduct development and leadership. He made the distinction of “jobs” as doing tasks while “work” is renting a set of skills. To succeed in a changing workplace, Sigelman puts forth that we must continue to grow and enhance our skills. I agree!

What are Skills?

Formal education gives us knowledge and some skills. As a chemical engineer, I have learned theories of math, chemistry, and physics. This knowledge is measurable in a quantitative way. There is a “right” answer to a calculus problem or to balancing heat and energy in a standard chemical stoichiometry.

Skills we learn in school or with work experience include analytical capability, writing, research, and creativity. These skills are not necessarily measurable but do differentiate success as innovation leaders. For example, the demand for team collaboration skills at work is in high demand for at least one-third of jobs today.

Mixed Skills

Sigleman defined “hybrid jobs” as work activities that require both specialized technical skills (e.g. math, chemistry, physics) and critical skills (e.g. people and processes). Job growth and education experience change at 1-2% per year, but skills change as much as 40% per years. Successful new product development (NPD) practitioners and product managers must not only maintain current knowledge in their field of specialization but also grow and enhance their leadership skills. This means learning and practicing sound project management protocols while also adopting and sustaining team development practices.

Today’s most important jobs require mixed skills. Data scientists cannot be content with analyzing a set of numbers. They must translate that data into information on which to base technology and market growth activities. Technical skills must balance against communication and decision-making skills. New Product Development Professionals (NPDP) use quantitative market data to estimate pricing and market capacity for product innovations. Yet, it is qualitative interpretation of customer knowledge that leads innovation leaders to product development decisions, profitability, and improved market share.

Building Mixed Skills

Lifelong learning and a commitment to growth are the fuel to build mixed skills for today’s job market. As noted at the AIChE conference, credential demonstrate expertise and mastery of mixed skills. Innovation leaders use NPDP certification as a stepping stone for product management career growth illustrating experience with product portfolio management and NPD processes as well as team management and leadership development.

You can learn more about NPDP certification here. Benchmark your own innovation maturity with the Innovation Health Assessment™. Take the complimentary Innovation Health Assessment here. Contact me at info@Simple-PDH.com for more information on developing your skills for a rewarding career in product innovation.

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Epic Innovation Failures and What to Do Differently (Part 2)

Posted on 07.04.19

Last week in the blog, we talked about some epic failures. Nokia, Sears, and Google all demonstrated huge failures by failing to recognize the competition and failing to understand customer needs. This week we’re going to talk about what to do differently and how to learn from these epic failures.

What to Do Differently

Hindsight is blessed with data and analysis, but as innovators we need to ask what can be done differently. At the key decision points in product development what could Nokia, Sears, or Google have done differently? These companies failed to innovate, and it cost them business. In the case of Sears, the cost has spread to employees losing their jobs and impacting growth in other arenas.

#1 – Don’t Underestimate Changing Trends

Nokia, Sears, and Google+ experienced epic failures because they failed to recognize changing consumer tastes. Moreover, these companies made a classic error of investing in sustaining innovations. Disruptive innovation serves customers with new business models, not just new technology. The iPhone offered conveniences in data transfer, no matter how clunky or slow, that Nokia devices did not.

#2 – Scale of Operations Does Not Translate to Innovation Success

Sears had huge investments in department stores across the country. The back-office operations were hefty in order to manage product purchases and distribution across nearly every household category. On top of that, Sears’ own brands, like Craftsman, required intensive management.

Sometimes, the scale of operations can add cost benefits. If a factory can increase throughput, then the variable cost per unit declines and profits increase. However, innovation suffers when the scale of operations becomes unfocused and the strategy moves to serving everyone all the time. This is the core reason that sustaining innovations slowly drive a business into demise. Focus is a key ingredient for long term innovation success. Focus is something that Sears had lost along the way.

#3 – Market Timing is Important

AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) still emerging, and we don’t yet know how markets and consumers will use these technologies. Lowe’s has had some success to help do-it-yourselfers with AR. Google Glass was probably launched too early in the product life cycle, while Google+ was launched too late to be competitive. Market timing means having deep customer insights and understanding the competition. Innovation depends on understanding technologies, products, customers, and the global marketplace. These skills require that a company look outside-in rather than inside out. Before launching a radical new product, like Google Glass, testing of features, attributes, and end-user acceptance need to be completed in a thorough fashion. Market research data is far less expensive than a failed product launch!

Epic Failures and what to Do Differently

Last week we looked at some major product and brand failures. But failures are only useful to study if we learn from them and then approach future projects with new knowledge. To prevent epic failures and take advantage of the benefits of disruptive innovation, companies need to do three things well.

Understand market needs and consumer trends.
Focus on what you do well and don’t scale outside your focus area.
Time product launches based on customer needs rather than technology availability.

How to Innovate Differently

Knowing what to do and knowing how to do it are two very different skills. You know the stories of epic failures and now you need to implement innovation best practices. Join me for the July online New Product Development Best Practices Training and our August Innovation Master Mind Q&A webinar. Best practices training teaches you how to innovate effectively and the Innovation Master Mind makes you accountable for long-term innovation success. For more information please contact me at info at Simple-PDH.com.

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Product Development Fundamentals

Posted on 06.06.19

New product development (NPD) is a set of processes and systems that convert ideas into saleable products and services. Successful NPD means that those processes are simple, repeatable, and lead to profit. Nearly every organization – big or small – creates new products and services in order to stay competitive. But, to win the competition, the business must be successful at continuous NPD. As Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Simple

NPD processes and systems must be simple to lead to repetitive success in innovation. As an engineer, I appreciate simplicity. The most elegant systems that humans have ever created are truly the least complicated. And as an engineer, I know that when a system breaks down, it is much quicker and easier to troubleshoot a simple system then a complex one.

Simple NPD processes include traditional staged-and-gated systems as well as emerging agile processes, like Scrum. A typical staged-and-gated system for innovation requires the NPD team to lay out goals and action plans for the next stage of work. A set of gatekeepers, will approve the course of work along with an appropriate budget and by assigning adequate resources. In this way, each stage of work is evaluated for risk and the gate reviews ensure progress on the project as the new product moves from idea to concept to prototype and, finally, to commercialization.

Scrum processes are also simple systems to develop new products. In this case, flexibility in design is valued and product specifications are varied to ensure customer satisfaction. Risk is managed via frequent customer feedback, and prototypes are created in parallel while the NPD team scopes the remainder of the project.

Repeatable

Regardless of whether an organization chooses to follow traditional staged-and-gated NPD systems or more flexible Scrum project management frameworks, innovation processes must be repeatable. Processes should repeatedly eliminate poor concepts early and rapidly advance the most promising ideas. Project advancement decisions are made on a consistent and predictable basis. As a result of repeatable innovation, investment in design and marketing is steady while new products grow in contribution to the overall product portfolio.

Profitability

I recently heard someone say that if you’re not making sales, you are just playing with a hobby. New product development must lead to business profits or the business will suffer. Of course, there is an expected time period in which the investment in design and development will exceed sales, but at some point, every successful product or service turns a profit.

As a kid, I really loved doing plastic canvas needlepoint. I made all kinds of cool items from coasters to tissue box covers and tic-tac-toe games. During the course of a summer, I completely saturated my mom, sisters, and grandmothers with my clever crafts. So, I put the rest up for sale at the shop of a family friend. After Christmas, half of my “wonderful” products came back to me. I made a teensy, tiny profit and learned the difference between a hobby and a business.

Fundamentals of Product Development

New product development requires three facets to be successful: simple processes, repeatable systems, and profitable endeavors. Without these three fundamentals an idea might be converted into a reality but not a commercial, saleable product.

To learn more about product development fundamentals, join our easy online course at www.simple-pdh.com. Learning about Product Development Fundamentals is the first step in your journey to becoming an innovation leader. Contact me for more information!

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Design Thinking Tools

Posted on 05.16.19

Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting to the South Texas Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (STS AIChE) for the professional development hour. I love to help people learn how to solve problems more creatively, so we discussed and practiced several different design thinking tools for innovation. My thanks to Babak Rafienia (pictured here with me) for his high-level organizational skills, despite torrential rains and flooding in Houston on the night of the event.

Design Thinking Model

Design thinking is a collaborative and creative problem-solving methodology that helps individuals and teams find the best solutions by focusing on customer empathy. The model is simple – two steps – identify the problem and solve the problem.

However, we do iterate between a Discovery Stage and Define Stage to correctly identify the problem, and we cycle between creating multiple solution alternatives and evaluating them in the solving phase. No new product development (NPD) team should ever go to the lab without clarifying a customer’s problem. It is fun to invent new things, yet unless there is a market need for the technical solution, developers are just playing.

Discovery

In the discovery stage we use tools like a customer journey map and a customer empathy map. These design thinking tools help us to understand how consumers know that they have a problem, what they think and feel about the problem, and how they identify product and service solutions. The customer journey map also involves following end-users past the point of purchase to understand how they feel about the product during use and at the end of its life cycle.

Define

The define stage of design thinking clarifies the customer’s needs into a simple statement. At the STS AIChE meeting, we practiced defining problems using noun/verb matching. This tool increases collaboration and also encourages creative solutions. It’s important to differentiate between complaints and problem statements. You may never make a whiner happy, but you can design product solutions that address clear and simple problem statements.

Create

A fun and useful design thinking activity for an NPD team is to collect the problem statements from the define phase and categorize them using a mind map or affinity diagram. In our practice exercise at STS AIChE, we used the example of disrupting airline travel by employing a variety of design thinking tools, including customer journey maps and noun/verb matching. Our affinity diagram showed some key categories of improving the waiting areas before boarding a flight and enhancing seating on the airplane itself. The next step (Evaluate Phase) would be to generate and test simple prototypes of say, larger and lighter standing seats (one idea from our session).

Design Thinking Tools

You can use design thinking tools to address a lot of different situations and problems. The benefit of design thinking tools is that they are fast and easy to use, they build collaboration, and enhance creativity. You focus on the end-user’s needs from a qualitative perspective ensuring that you build empathy for the customer.

Act now

Our discount rate for Life Design Master Mind ends on 17 May 2019. In Life Design Master Mind, you will learn how to apply design thinking tools to your own situation – whether that is growing the skills of your NPD team or to making a decision to go back to school or change jobs. Give me a call at area code 281 phone 280-8717 if you want to review the Life Design Master Mind Q&A webinar recording from April. Sign up here for Life Design Master Mind 17 May 2019 to get the upfront discount!

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Job Crafting to Increase Creativity

Posted on 05.02.19

Working as product, project, and engineering managers, we often balance quality with deadlines. Product concept tests must be completed before the engineer designs for the plant can be locked in. Customer testing – while ongoing – must be limited by budgets and workforce availability.

These trade-offs are frustrating to both managers and new product development (NPD) team members alike. Too many project boundaries can constrain innovation, yet infrequent or fuzzy milestones can delay a market launch. NPD managers ask their team members for both rigorous adherence to schedules and budgets and creative, out-of-the-box problem-solving.

One solution to improve the trade-offs that are inherent in a complex innovation project is to increase the role of job crafting. Job crafting is a set of tools that allows team members to frame their work to capitalize on their most important skills, to increase learning and engagement.

Job Enhancement

Enhancing a job typically means adding horizontal tasks to improve the skill sets of the worker. To a point, job enhancement will improve employee motivation. But job enhancement sometimes means just adding more tasks without re-balancing the staff’s existing job responsibilities. Managers have good intentions in expanding a team member’s work, including learning and growth, increased exposure, and skill development.

Years ago, in one of my earlier assignments as an engineering manager, I specifically sought job enhancement for a star employee. Darcy, as I’ll call her, was a smart engineer, had great interpersonal skills, and was dedicated to her work. Knowing that the performance ranking system at the corporation was treating her (and many others) unfairly, I wanted to improve her potential and give a new opportunity to showcase her competency as an engineer. To that end, I assigned Darcy to lead a small, customer-focused research study. As the project lead, she would gain visibility with senior management and would be able to demonstrate skills in which I knew she excelled. Compared to her peers, Darcy was best positioned to successfully deliver the results of the research study.

To my chagrin, Darcy responded negatively when I offered her the opportunity to lead the research project. What I thought was a job enhancement, she interpreted simply as “more work”. At the time, I didn’t know she was attending night school to get an MBA and was also trying to start a family. Of course, any “job enhancement” in those circumstances would be viewed as “more work.”

Job Crafting

A better alternative to job enhancement is job crafting. Job crafting allows team members to select the majority of their work tasks based on their likes and dislikes, anticipated learning opportunities, personal career trajectories. When you allow your team members to work on what they like and what they choose, creativity and motivation skyrocket.

At first, many managers think that job crafting will leave them with no one to do the steady, boring work like printing and sending invoices, conducting sales calls, or bookkeeping. Yet, everyone is different and while a Type A personality team member wants to press ahead on a new technical product design, a quiet detail-oriented team member is happy to immerse herself in the statistical analysis of big data. Together, these team members can tackle all the necessary tasks for an innovation project to reach completion, on-time and on-budget.

Agile Teams

This collaborative approach to NPD is precisely called out in the agile philosophy. Working as generalist-specialists, the agile NPD team will take on product development projects with a high degree of motivation that is driven from within themselves. The generalist-specialist on an agile NPD team will work on whatever tasks are necessary to complete a sprint and will do the “heads-down” work of his or her specialty to ensure overall team success. Collaboration among team members wand with the customer is easy because the generalist-specialist desires to learn new skills and is inspired by the project rather a self-serving ego.

It is natural for an agile team to craft their jobs according to skills and competencies and to do tasks that give them joy. These types of teams have higher rates of output and their work is more creative as a result of the deep trust and collaboration.

Another characteristic of agile teams is the determination to complete a project for the benefit of the customer. An agile NPD project is continually driven by customer needs which are tested and validated throughout the product development life cycle. Rapid concept and prototype testing is used to weed out bad ideas and to ensure customer needs are properly incorporated into the product design requirements. Frequent customer interaction leads to better designs, faster time-to-market, and higher market share upon product launch.

Job Crafting for Innovation

Successful innovations require a clear understanding of customer needs, good market timing, and excellent design of product and service features. To generate successful innovation, NPD teams must be motivated, creative, and collaborative. Allowing team members to craft their work assignments within the NPD project boundaries leads to greater success.

Job crafting is different than job enhancement (as I learned the hard way). In the latter case, managers try to motivate and engage team members by expanding their roles and responsibilities. And while job enhancement can increase team engagement, the most motivated and inspired workers are ones that craft their daily work to use skills that they value most. Team members that craft their own jobs, as in an agile project management environment, are more creative and inspired. Project work is balanced among team members with different skills and desires.

Learn More

To learn more about job crafting and agile NPD, please join me and other inspired and creative innovation workers in a master mind group where we exchange ideas and hold each other accountable to achieve the highest level innovation goals. We are currently accepting new applicants to the Life Design Master Mind group with a new cohort starting 21 May 2019. The discounted upfront payment ends soon, so you’ll want to join soon to learn how to apply Design Thinking tools to craft your own best job! Contact me at area code (281) plus 280-8717 or at info@simple-pdh.com for more information.

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Why You Need Creativity for Creative Problem-Solving

Posted on 04.18.19

A lot of people say they are not creative. I guess we are afraid that if we share our imaginations and dreams, we might be ridiculed or criticized. Yet, every day, an artist opens a new gallery. She is proud and excited to share her creations with others.

Creativity is defined by Dictionary.com as “the state or quality of being creative,” which in turn means original thought or expression. So, an artist creates original oil paintings and we admire them at an art gallery or museum. An architect designs a modern symphony hall and we praise his work with the unique building style fitting into the skyline of the community. My personal creative outlet is in scrapbooking and making greeting cards. Someone who is a “real” artist might criticize the simplicity of my cards, but others find joy in receiving a handmade card on their birthday or anniversary. I am not afraid of what others think because my creativity is my own and I relax while I am creating.

Creativity, then, takes many forms. It can be the creation of an original work of art or it can be the piecing together of various parts. Dictionary.com also defines creativity as “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns … to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods …” This is the precise definition we should keep in mind as innovators applying Design Thinking to our life challenges. Leaders can increase creativity in their new product development (NPD) teams by using tools that help team members capitalize on their individual strengths in a collaborative, sharing environment. It is often the assembly of these various individual ideas into a larger whole that “transcends traditional thinking.“ And when we come up with new ideas and concepts, we can apply them to situations that improve customer satisfaction and product quality.

Creative Problem-Solving

Problem-solving typically involves at least 5 steps to be successful period to be successful period

Identify the problem
Define the problem statement
Generate potential solutions
Test solutions
Review and select the best solution

A standard problem-solving procedure is methodical and simple. It should lead you to the best solution and in the shortest time possible. Yet, I observe innovation teams marching through these steps, marking them “complete“ without a full consideration of really addressing the problem. This is where creative problem-solving enters the picture.

Creative problem-solving doesn’t grab the first or the easiest or the cheapest solution. Instead, creative problem-solving is a bit messy and it’s iterative, yet it will generate a better solution in the end. For example, when you identify a problem that challenges your customers, is it a closed discussion in the problem statement such as “improve product reliability by 10%“. Open-ended problem statements can lead to more creative solutions since there are not assumptions built in. “Improving customer satisfaction” is a more open-ended problem statement than including a specific reliability improvement metric.

Creative problem-solving instead investigates the drivers and customer emotions that require product development work. What percentage of customers complain about reliability? How does our product reliability compare to competitors? Where are failures in product reliability occurring?

Again, we return to the tools of Design Thinking to guide creative problem-solving. Design Thinking allows us to empathize with customers to truly identify the problems they face. We shadow and observe how, when, and where they use the product. What is the reliability issue – does it occur immediately upon product usage or after 10 or 100 uses of the product? And importantly, as NPD practitioners, we must ask why is product reliability important to the customer? The food and drug industry will have different answers then companies that specialize in software-as-a-service.

Divergent Thinking

When we’re satisfied that we’ve identified the right customer problem, and we can clearly and concisely define it with a problem statement, we generate potential solutions with creative ideation. Ideation is just a fancy word that means creating ideas and concepts. During ideation, functional NPD team members work with customers to combine, modify, and substitute pieces and parts to generate new ideas and concepts. Ideation is a divergent thinking activity where even wild and seemingly illogical ideas are created. Sometimes, there is a gold nugget within a crazy, impractical idea that leads to a creative product solution.

For example, after an oil spill in the ocean, a large drilling company was stuck on how to clean it up. Using the traditional problem-solving steps, they were only coming up with ho-hum, incremental ideas. But, when they stepped back, applied the ideas of Design Thinking and creative problem-solving, they generated a unique solution to clean-up. It started with the crazy idea that seals absorb a lot of oil into their fur. Yet that innovation materialized in a rotating vessel equipped with oil-capturing brushes and a collection tank that facilitated removal of oil from the water surface.

Design Thinking tools like analogies, role playing, interviewing, and SCAMPER all help teams generate potential creative solutions. Matching, A/B testing, and card sorting are tools that provide insight to customer needs and whether we have defined the right problem to solve. Design Thinking also lets us test prototype solutions for functionality and customer acceptance with a low-cost commitment during product development.

Creativity for Creative Problem-Solving

Creativity is generating new ideas with the ability to transcend existing thinking about a problem. All of us can be creative, even though we might not be famous artists or architects. We can combine colors, textures, and functions to generate novel ideas. Importantly, we can be creative problem-solvers using deep listening with customers to empathize with their problems. Understanding the many different facets of a problem leads to a better, more creative solution.

Design Thinking tools are great to apply as NPD teams create lots of potential ideas and concepts. Lots of ideas is an expected outcome of divergent thinking and supports customer collaboration. Creativity in problem-solving yields superior results and allows an organization to get to market faster with new products that satisfy customer needs. Many of these tools and techniques also serve individuals well as they seek to make balance personal and professional decisions to find joy and purpose in life. Join us on Thursday, 18 April 2019 at 3:30pm to learn about the Life Design Master Mind group. The webinar is FREE and, based on your feedback, we have redesigned the online workshops to make it extremely affordable! Click here to register. Contact me at info@globalnpsolutions.com or area code 281, 280-8717 for more information or questions.

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Spiral Development for NPD Projects

Posted on 02.21.19

New products are the lifeblood of any organization. You can’t stand still, or you will quickly be overcome by the competition. Customers not only expect, but indeed they demand, that products and product lines are frequently refreshed and revitalized. Brands that fail to do so end up with financial issues and serious questions about their viability, like Sears and Payless Shoe Source.

How do successful companies maintain relevancy and prominence in a globally competitive and ever-changing marketplace? Designing new products that delight customers and generate long-term revenue is a surefire bet to success. Businesses also need to manage operations with processes like Six Sigma, yet continued growth and increased market share rely upon periodic new product launches to expand product lines and meet customer needs.

NPD Processes

New product development (NPD) processes are significantly broader than those of Six Sigma or traditional project management. NPD starts with the organization’s mission and creatively builds customer demand through the product life cycle. Conventional NPD processes are called “waterfall” since the steps in the design and development of a new product fall in a given order and cascade from one to another. The most commonly instituted waterfall NPD process was developed by Bob Cooper and is a staged and gated system.

Traditional Staged and Gated NPD Process

In a classic staged and gated NPD process, work is done in stages and project decisions are made at gates. The system design is optimized for risk management in whicheach stage of work requires greater investment than the previous one. Gate decisions are made by cross-functional management teams of higher rank as the project moves forward.

There are many benefits to a traditional staged and gated NPD process. First, the system is designed to proactively manage financial and market risk. If the work in a particular stage does not provide the new product concept, then a “No” gate decision will halt further development. In this way, risk is minimized. Another strong benefit of a staged and gated NPD system is that the work required for each stage is clearly delineated, and NPD team members understand gate requirements in advance and in detail.

However, as implemented, many organizations fail to take advantage of the full capability of a staged and gated NPD system. Cooper intended for frequent customer interactions and that both customer needs and customer satisfaction would receive positive marks in order for a new product project o advance at a gate decision to the next stage. Instead, many firms fail to involve the customer once the initial project charter is drafted. Moreover, many gatekeepers err to measuring past progress rather than validating the effectiveness of future project plans. (See Gatekeeper Training to read more about this topic.)

Spiral NPD

To counteract the negative implementations of a traditional staged and gated NPC process, a Spiral NPD Process has been designed by Bob Cooper and associates as an update to the original water system. In a spiral process, increased iteration is introduced to each stage of work. These increments incorporate rapid testing and customer feedback, much like a sprint in an agile project management framework.

Spirals allow the work of a stage to be broken into smaller, more manageable chunks. These iterations also encourage NPD team members to test ideas, concepts, and prototypes with customers to gain their feedback. Steps within a stage cycle through Build-Test-Feedback-Revise functions in order to ensure the product under design will meet customer needs.

Other areas in which Spiral NPD adopts agile practices include the daily stand-up meeting and sprint retrospectives. The daily stand-up meeting encourages NPD team communication and collaboration via a quick. 15-minute meeting. Typically, the dedicated team members gather in their designated work area (often called a “war room”) to briefly outline their efforts and challenges. Each person addresses only three questions and detailed discussions are taken offline and with only the parties directly impacted by this issue.

What did I accomplish yesterday?
What do I plan to do today?
Do I have any challenges to completing my work?

Benefits of Spiral NPD

Using a hybrid agile-staged and gated system for innovation, such as Spiral NPD, can accelerate product development. With its iterative customer feedback loops, Spiral NPD is more responsive to customer needs. In addition, Spiral NPD enhances the productivity of the NPD team and of the organization as people work on the right things at the right time. Feature, product, and business objectives are better prioritized since the voice of the customer is intimately woven throughout each new product development cycle.

Implementing Spiral NPD

In my observations, the biggest challenge for organizations transitioning from a traditional waterfall planning process to an adaptive innovation ecosystem, is a change in culture. Management no longer dictates top-down directives and project leaders no longer set out aggressive schedules and budgets. Instead, NPD team members are self-organizing and self-directing. The NPD team itself will decide how to work each iteration and stage in the product development life cycle. The sprint retrospective drives learning and behavior change immediately into the next Build-Test-Feedback-Revise cycle. Project managers also transition into servant leader roles, adopting transformative skills to drive change and flexibility focused on customer expectations.

Learn More

To learn more about Spiral NPD, 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 info@simple-pdh.com 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!

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

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Agile in New Product Development

Posted on 02.07.19

For some time now, agile project management methods have been a hot topic. The agile philosophy emerged in 2001 as a group of software developers tried to find a better way to launch completed products. Until then, they had struggled with severely delayed schedules and rampant budget overruns.

So, what is magical about agile? Really, there is nothing mysterious or bewitching about the agile approach. Instead, the philosophy encourages a development framework that forces a team back to the fundamentals of new product project management. And in innovation, those fundamentals are the customers and their needs.

The Agile Philosophy

The agile philosophy is built on a set of four values that favor customer interaction and activity over planning and contract negotiation (agilemanifesto.org). Traditional project management frameworks, including the staged-and-gated decision process in new product development (NPD), can become document-heavy. Especially large and risk-averse organizations tend toward adding processes, procedures, and policies to reduce project failures.

Instead of adding documentation to a project plan, the agile methodology adds more communication and testing. The research to create more detailed plans does indeed make the team more aware of project risks, but it does nothing to actually address those uncertainties. Brainstorming alternatives to implement IF a risk is triggered is a good practice but testing those alternative solutions in a trial will reveal the best answer in a clear and unconditional manner.

Thus, agile supports close customer interactions, lots of prototype testing, cross-functional (vs. sequential) project tasks, and collaborative communication. These values are foundational in a successful NPD program, especially if the team is targeting a radical or disruptive innovation. This is why software products served as an early demonstration of agile implementation.

It is very difficult to document the various cases in which a software tool will be used before the code is written. It’s also next-to-impossible to know which features customers will use and how they will use them. Agile allows the development team to build and test to generate information rather than preparing plans with assumed requirements.

As an example, my favorite hobby is scrapbooking, and I make greeting cards for friends and family. In fact, if I skip a holiday, they are still asking for a handmade card. I have been subscribing to a scrapbook/card-making magazine for several years to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and to find inspiring, creative ideas from other artists. I like to take copies of the magazine with me on trips as it is easy to thumb through while in queues or at the airport or in the evening at a hotel.

The publisher began putting a one-page ad into the magazine a couple of years ago about developing a mobile app. The mobile app would let you view the card photos on your phone or tablet. Now, keep in mind that the full magazine content includes photos of cards, supply lists, vendor information, and instructions to duplicate the art exactly.

Unfortunately, the publisher moved forward to develop their mobile app without consulting readers (customers). They spent a lot of money to develop the new product (the app), but it is not differentiated from other, free sources of photos of greeting cards. In designing a mobile app, the publisher moved away from what made their print magazine special (supply lists, instructions, and grouping of product examples). I found out recently that the publisher is out of business – losing their base product (magazine) at the cost of a new product (the app) built without customer input.

How Do You Implement Agile in NPD?

Because agile methodologies were originally designed for software, companies working with tangible products sometimes question whether the approach is right for them. The answer is a resounding, “Yes!” Remember that the agile framework for project management is a return to fundamentals – what do customers need and is what we are designing meet their needs?

Some of the core principles within agile are very easy to implement. For example, the idea of rapid prototyping to gain real customer feedback is a step that any NPD team can incorporate to any process immediately. Talking to and observing customer when they use your product or try to solve a particular problem is inexpensive and drives the agile value of customer interactions.

Other aspects of agile are more difficult to put in place at a firm. In particular, the agile framework changes the culture of the NPD team and changes the way we do design and development work. First, teams will learn how to work together collaboratively rather than doing R&D, engineering, or marketing work in sequential silos. Next, the development effort proceeds much faster – in sprints – with the concepts of time-boxing and delivery of working features at the forefront. Finally, old forms and templates, and especially directive management, are replaced with transparent and interactive measures of project status.

Scrum

Scrum is the most common implementation of the agile philosophy in new product development. Scrum utilizes short, but intense, work periods that create usable deliverables. For example, while a software project might product a few lines of tested code at the completion of a 1-week sprint, an NPD team may product a full customer journey map at the conclusion of a month-long sprint. Neither deliverable yields a fully integrated working product, but each sub-system is completed and ready-to-go in a short period of time. Each deliverable is independently tested and validated with customers.

In addition, Scrum utilizes three important roles in implementation. First, the product owner represents the voice of customer. This ensures the close interaction with both customer and business needs throughout the life of the NPD project. The Scrum Master is not a traditional project management but acts to facilitate work and communication among team members and business interfaces.

Finally, the Scrum team is a cross-functional, collaborative group that does the work of the project. They remain focused on the project throughout the development cycle. This team is small enough to make critical product design decisions and is diverse enough to address product development issues across the engineering, operations, and sales spectrum.

Agile NPD

Agile has moved beyond a hot topic to a way of life for many companies. By re-focusing on the fundamentals of new product development, an agile project management approach can speed time-to-market and increase the quality of the products launched. Moreover, the very nature of an agile approach to NPD drives more creative and disruptive innovations.

Learn More

To learn more about agile in new product development, 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 pre-workshop course on Design Thinking. Use code “bundle” at checkout and save 15% on both courses. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com 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!

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

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