How should we plan our product development?

Whatever kind of project you’re planning, there are some essential steps:

1. Decide what we’re going to do – what are our Customers’ Needs?
2. Choose our priorities carefully – Safety, Quality, Cost or Time?
3. Measure progress as we go – are we proceeding to plan?
4. Manage our resources – are we focussed on the ‘Critical Path’?
5. Make sure we’ve done what we wanted to – have completed tasks met their objectives?
6. Learn what to do better next time – how do we fix the process, not just this product?

Within ‘Waterfall’ or ‘Phase-Gate’ style product development, progress is measured by review milestones. These are achieved as the project passes acceptance criteria, in the form of a Specification, then Design and eventually an assembled Prototype.

Once we’ve agreed a specification which meets our market needs, the design work can often be done ‘in parallel’. Growing the team or outsourcing tasks enables more concurrent working, reducing timescales.

When developing hardware, where possible we should check the design meets its specification before we built it – often described as ‘Verification’. Simulation tools are available for analogue (e.g. Spice) and digital electronics (e.g. Mentor, Cadence). Finite Element Analysis tools (e.g. Ansys, Comsol) allow physical systems to be simulated.

Software modules can be verified separately by unit testing. Interactions with hardware may need additional simulation code, or a hybrid test model. More complex (e.g. mechatronic) products may require system modelling (e.g. Matlab, Simulink) to simulate interactions between software and mechanics, such as motion control.

Even pure software products can benefit from rigorous Verification, especially in safety-critical applications such as automotive, aerospace, and medical devices.

Ideally, we should test or simulate as we develop, so the design is regularly iterated, improving quality, and reducing risks. Once we’re satisfied that our design has been successfully Verified against the specification, then we’re ready to build the prototype.

After the prototype components have been procured (e.g. parts, circuits, third party software), they can be carefully integrated. This is typically where project tasks become more ‘serial’, and timescales less predictable. Interfaces usually cause the problems – assembling mechanical parts, wiring up electronics and integrating software APIs can all reveal errors which cause delays. When this happens, there’s often an opportunity to improve the Verification process, while also fixing the prototype.

Most complex products require some configuration. This includes all the settings needed to ‘fine tune’ the system. Adjustments such as mechanical alignment, electronics waveforms and software look-up tables may be necessary to optimise performance or get the prototype running at all!

Finally, some kind of system test is needed to ‘Validate’ the prototype. Ideally, we should compare it with our original specification to ensure we achieved our goals. Any discrepancies should be documented and must be approved before proceeding further. Where possible, we should also seek ‘Voice of the Customer’ feedback on the prototype from early adopters.

Planning all this work (e.g. with Gantt charts) improves project visibility and can highlight the ‘critical path’ which determines overall timescales. Updating this plan regularly helps to track progress and identify any new dependencies.

Sometimes it pays to build a semi-functional prototype sooner, to identify any flawed assumptions as early as possible. This can allow the design to be iterated quicker, saving time and cost.

Whatever process we follow, it’s good to keep checking our assumptions as we go. By the end, we should have learned a lot more, and might not agree with our previous decisions!

If you’d like to discuss how to plan your Product Development, please get in touch!