How might we develop our products?

New Product Development can take years, so it’s worth breaking it down into manageable chunks. There are many different models for doing this, so it can be tough to choose one. Most product development processes fall into two camps:

1. Classic ‘Waterfall’ models, also known as Phase-Gate.
2. Modern ‘Agile’ methods, such as Scrum which are based on lean thinking.

Waterfall methods are best suited to heavily regulated industries, such as Aerospace and Pharmaceutical. Safety-critical products require each stage to be formally authorised to ensure accountability. In this context, the specification and quality become paramount, which means cost and time are more likely to stretch!

Agile works best in SaaS environments, where the product can be updated ‘live’ with new features and bug fixes. Frequent ‘Sprints’ allow fast design iteration, and ‘DevOps’ techniques can help drive development from operational customer feedback. This allows release timescales and costs to be managed tightly, but features may get dropped and quality needs to be watched carefully.

Recently, ‘Design Thinking’ has also become popular, which can encompass both Waterfall and Agile in different contexts. All these approaches can be blended to suit your market requirements and the maturity of your business.

When Inca Digital Printers spun out of Cambridge Consultants, we based many of our business processes on theirs. So, we began with a solid project management framework, but lacked much structure for developing products based on our broader needs, including design for manufacture and service.

Following Inca’s acquisition by Screen of Kyoto, they pushed us to get more organised. As R&D Director, I was responsible for implementing our first (Waterfall style) product development process for ISO 9001 Compliance. Later as CEO, I instigated the introduction of a more agile project management process using JIRA.

Before choosing a development process it’s worth carefully considering the expectations of your target markets, in addition to your company’s priorities and future needs.

If you’d like to discuss how to choose the right Product Development Process for your company, please get in touch!