When I was in graduate school, I spent the better part of one day organizing our tool chest. In one drawer, I put all of our metric wrenches and sockets and then laid them out by size . Not only did it look tidy, but it was much more convenient to grab the right tool when you needed it. Everything had an assigned storage place and organizing the parts and pieces according to the job increased our efficiency in the lab.

People are what makes systems work. We assign roles and responsibilities within organizations to ensure that activities and tasks are completed. Similar to a tool chest, assigning job roles to different people ensures they are trained appropriately to conduct tasks as expected. The system itself often is less important than how the people assigned to various roles and responsibilities carry out their tasks within that process.

Wagile Product Development Reviewed

In the Wagile system of product development (read more here), certain roles and responsibilities are assigned to ensure an efficient product innovation effort accomplishes timely goals. As a quick recap, Wagile is a hybrid approach to traditional waterfall project management and the Agile philosophy commonly applied to software development. The advantage of Wagile over other new product development (NPD) systems is that it enhances the frequency of customer feedback during design and development. Another advantage of Wagile is that it applies iterative development within predetermined boundaries (e.g. budget and schedule). Finally, the biggest advantage of Wagile is enhanced communication and team collaboration. Read more about Wagile here.

Roles in Wagile

In every project management and product innovation system, it is critical to include customer perspectives, internal stakeholder viewpoints, and contributions of vendors and suppliers. The key roles of internal stakeholders in a Wagile process include the Project Leader, the Customer Representative, the Team Leader, and the Cross-Functional Team.

Project Leader

Because Wagile adopts the Agile philosophy, the process succeeds at improving time-to-market of new products by reducing hierarchy and bureaucracy. The role of Project Leader is much like a Scrum Master. The Project Leader serves the team to reduce barriers to efficiency and productivity. In addition, s/he interacts with senior executives, external stakeholders, and the Customer Representative to ensure the product development effort is on target. Some Project Leaders act in a dual role as a brand manager or product manager, tracking the overall life cycle value of the new product.

Customer Representative

No product development project can be successful without customer input. The role of Customer Representative in Wagile is to build trust with customers, to collect end-user data, and to organize market research activities for the target customer segment. In Scrum, the voice of customer is delegated to the Product Owner role. (Read more about typical Scrum roles here.) Yet, in practice, the product owner often bypasses true customer insights and reflects internal priorities for project execution instead. A critical performance metric for the customer representative in Wagile is the number of external customer, consumer, and end-user interactions.

Team Leader

The Team Leader and the Project Leader are like an old, married couple. They work together to accomplish the project goals and complement one another. While the Project Leader often focuses on longer term strategic objectives, the Team Leader focuses on operational and tactical goals. The Team Leader is charismatic and builds collaborative skills for the team. S/he also manages the new product development scope, schedule, and budget but has autonomy for decisions for project outcomes.

Cross-Functional Team

Not all project teams are created equal. The Wagile Cross-Functional Team brings together the “generalist–specialist” mentality of Scrum team members while also capitalizing on the depth of skills needed in a traditional project team. While teams are generally small in Wagile as in scrum, scalability is less of an issue.

Small teams allow for quicker and better decisions, so Wagile uses intimate Cross-Functional Teams to complete the tasks of the new product development project. However, as product innovation advances to later phases and requires greater talent investment, sub-teams form to accomplish specific goals and objectives. Communication among Cross-Functional Teams (and sub-teams) is vital to the success of any project, regardless of the project management system.

Roles for Wagile Product Development

Like any system, Wagile product development relies on the people to do the work of the project and to progress toward goals. Understanding the roles and responsibilities of key players within the system allows each person to access necessary training, streamline workflows, and improve communication. Critical roles in Wagile include the Project Leader, the Customer Representative, the Team Leader, and the Cross-Functional Team.

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.

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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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Most businesses today employ a new product development (NPD) process to manage innovation. Studies indicate that over 80% of leading US companies use a phased and gated framework to convert embryonic ideas to commercial products. Yet research also shows that about half of all new products fail.

So, it is not surprising that companies are looking for other systems to manage NPD projects. Because Agile has been successful in software development, many firms are considering project management frameworks, like Scrum, for physical new product development. You can learn more about traditional, waterfall NPD processes here and Scrum for NPD here.

A disadvantage of Scrum in physical product development is that while features can be designed during a typical two- to four-week long sprint, it is often difficult to test a feature without the availability of the whole product solution. Consider, for example, testing automatic collision avoidance on a vehicle without knowing the weight, horsepower, or tire diameter of that vehicle.

“Wagile” for NPD

So, we know that NPD projects must be faster and more responsive to customer needs than we can normally deliver in a traditional phased and gated process. We also know that going fully agile is not practical in many situations. What’s the answer? “Wagile!”

“Wagile” is a hybrid of waterfall and agile processes, adopting the positive aspects of each project management framework to physical product development. Wagile processes are faster and more flexible than conventional staged and gated processes but recognize the whole system as a product. Moreover, wagile processes interface with customers at key intervals to determine functional needs and to garner important design insights at the right times in the project life cycle.

Iterative Wagile

Iterative wagile processes are often used for new product development projects that have a few, higher risk technical or market uncertainties. The market is known and developing so speed-to-market is a critical factor in commercial success. Frequently the firm has significant technical competency in the product category and is skilled at quality production in this product arena.

In this variety of wagile NPD project management, sprints are applied early in the process to address specific technical questions or to gain customer feedback for a particular product feature. The business case is documented upfront and project requirements are known within a wide bandwidth.

The iterative sprints are used to answer some specific questions so that the product design can be locked. Once those design requirements are determined, through a series of iterative technology or market experiments, a traditional waterfall process is followed for prototype generation, technical development, and commercial launch.

An example of a product for iterative wagile development is the iPad™. The market was generally known and growing as the use of eReaders was expanding in 2010. However, the iPad touchscreen required technical design beyond the smaller iPhone™ screens and some user interactions needed testing. However, once these design specifications were frozen, technical development and product manufacturing followed Apple’s traditional project management models – the same used for other existing products.

Incremental Wagile

In other cases, new products are really new platforms built to serve customers and users with new technologies and with novel applications. Consider, for instance, wearable fitness trackers. The goal of the NPD project is to deliver quality and to meet customer satisfaction objectives. Customers needed to be educated on how the product worked yet were knowledgeable about the intention and utility of the product.

For fitness trackers, an incremental wagile NPD process was appropriate. While technical and market uncertainties were both high, it was important to test proofs and prototypes in the marketplace. A minimally viable product (MVP) that simply counted steps was a first version of the product. The company gains market insights from the niche customers using an MVP and develops a second version of the product, purchased by a growing customer base.

Again, technical requirements are developed based on customer insights and feedback rom using the real product. Another, more sophisticated version is released based on this new market information, and the cycle repeats itself again and again.

Incremental wagile is an especially useful project management approach for a new product category. Fitbit™, like Kleenex™ and Xerox™, identifies the product category for fitness tracker today, yet functionality is radically more complex than the original step counters released as MVPs just a few years ago.

Wagile for NPD

Each NPD project is unique in some way. Thus, applying the “right” NPD and project management process approach requires evaluating several variables for the project. Some of these factors include the following.

Technical uncertainty
Market uncertainty
Customer availability
Company culture
Team structure
Competitive threats

However, most NPD projects can be successfully implement using a waterfall (staged and gated), agile (Scrum), or hybrid (wagile) approach.

We invite you to learn more about “wagile” new product development in an upcoming Agile NPD or New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification workshop. Check out our full class schedule at Simple-PDH.com. Please contact me if you’d like a free pdf copy of the Scrum Body of Knowledge (SBOK) and check out our current course list for Agile NPD and Scrum here. 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

Some great references on agile and Scrum are:

Essential Scrum by Kenneth Rubin
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Effective Project Management by Robert Wysocki
Being Agile by Leslie Ekas and Scott Will
Making Sense of Agile Project Management by Charles Cobb

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wagile

Roles in Wagile Product Development