“Do the Right Things” and “Do Them Right”
—Peter Drucker
“Do It Right the First Time”
—Philip Crosby
Successful product development is not just about innovation; it is about balancing process, people, decisions, and timing across the full lifecycle from concept to release.
This article explores product development as a structured project discipline. It introduces the environment in which product development operates and the principles that support successful execution across the lifecycle.
What Is a Project?
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. It has a clear beginning—signaled by management’s decision to fund it—and a definite end, reached when its objectives are met or the need for the product no longer exists. Unlike operational activities such as manufacturing or maintenance, every product development project is unique. A project may involve a single product, a family of similar products, or a system made up of several subsystems.
The Three Pillars of a Product Development Project
A product development project rests on three equally important components:
Development process,
Resources, tools, and best practices,
Project management.
Figure 1 summarizes this framework.
Figure 1
Success does not come from excelling in only one of these areas. It comes from maintaining an optimal balance across all three. While technical tools and processes vary by domain—such as automotive versus aviation—the core principles behind the Ten Commandments remain consistent.
Development Process
This component is tailored to the engineering, technology, and application domain of the product. It governs how the product is developed, verified, and validated. For example, a product in the automotive domain will follow a different approach from one in aviation. Because modern products are increasingly software-intensive and electronics-enabled, hardware and software subsystems often require different development approaches than mechanical subsystems.
Resources, Tools, and Best Practices
This is the technical and engineering foundation of product development. It emphasizes that human resources—the team members—are the most vital asset, supported by the right tools and a commitment to professional best practices.
Project Management
Project management must address the unique challenges of product development, including both known and unknown variables. The goal is to achieve an optimal balance between fulfilling user needs, managing project costs, and meeting time-to-market goals.
Project Management Challenge
The Unknowns
Product development teams encounter many unknowns as a project progresses, including both “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” The concept phase helps address known unknowns early. When unknown unknowns emerge, teams must respond with additional activities that often were not part of the original plan.
Activities and Achievements
Because activities required to resolve unknowns cannot always be planned in advance, they may not appear as formal planned activities. It is therefore important to define and track expected features, performance levels, and results as project milestones.
The Balance of Success
As shown in Figure 2 below, success in the product development project is judged by achieving optimal balance between:
Fulfilled needs: Ensuring that users are satisfied.
Project Cost: Staying within budget for both project and product costs.
Time to Market: Launching before the market opportunity is lost.
Figure 2
The Phase-Gate Approach
To manage the uncertainty and reduce risk, organizations use a Phase-Gate approach. The lifecycle moves from abstract ideas to finished products through a series of defined phases, each ending with a gate review that assesses progress and determines whether the project should advance.
A Gate Review is more than a checklist. It is a decision point that relies on expert judgment. Based on what has been accomplished, the team may proceed, rework the phase, or stop the project if the objectives are no longer achievable.
Phase names vary by project type and organization. For example, Design for Six Sigma uses the generic names for development phases Identify, Design, Optimize, Validate (IDOV).
For products that include mechanical and electronic hardware subsystems and require significant manufacturing activity, organizations typically use phases such as Concept, Design, Engineering, Validation (CDEV).
Concept Phase
The objective of the concept phase is to ensure that user needs are well understood and that the proposed product concept can meet those needs within reasonable time and cost constraints. If the concept depends on new technologies in which the organization lacks expertise, proof-of-concept should be carried out.
The concept phase includes the search for an optimal architectural solution and the right technologies to meet the requirements, evaluated against the best combination of technology, resources, and time-to-market considerations. This phase typically requires a limited number of resources, but it demands high creativity.
Design Phase
In the design phase, the team develops detailed designs for the system, subsystems, and components, and prepares the necessary documentation. It also builds working prototypes that substantially meet specifications, as demonstrated through testing. The objective of the design phase is to ensure that the design is robust and capable of meeting functional requirements and performance targets.
Engineering Phase
Preparing manufacturing documentation for components, subassemblies, and hardware—as well as well-engineered software and firmware—are key activities in the engineering phase. This phase also closes specification gaps identified during design phase. Building and testing engineering prototypes from manufacturing drawings, while finalizing documentation, helps ensure that the product as designed is manufacturable.
Validation Phase
This phase involves manufacturing a limited quantity (pilot lot) using final, tooled components and production-ready testing setups. Statistical analysis and field trials, as needed, help ensure that the manufactured product meets specifications. Testing for regulatory compliance is also an important part of this phase.
Figure 3 shows the objectives of the CDEV phases, the corresponding gate reviews, and their intent. It is important to note that evaluation should focus on accomplishments. Deliverables may include documents, prototypes, and other artifacts that support the review. In addition to these deliverables, review team members use expert judgment to make exit recommendations.
The figure also shows a Start Gate, which marks project initiation. Activities that occur before initiation are not normally treated as part of the formal product development process. These activities are still critical and include market research, customer pain-point analysis, market-trend analysis, competitive analysis, and business-case assessment. It is becoming increasingly common to involve key product development team members early to assess initial technical feasibility.
The Release Gate indicates that the product is ready for market release. The deliverables, including documentation, are then handed over to the responsible functions for use and ongoing maintenance as manufacturing references and product records. At that point, the project is closed, the development team is disbanded, and resources are reassigned to other projects.
Figure 3
It is important to understand that the Phase-Gate approach described above does not imply a so-called waterfall model of product development. Iterative and agile methodologies are widely adopted, especially for software-intensive subsystems. The Phase-Gate approach does not preclude agile methods such as Scrum where appropriate. In fact, each iteration can be viewed as a small Phase-Gate sequence: Concept, Design, Implementation, Validation, and Release. A product development project can also be broken into smaller patterns—projects, themes, epics, and stories—to which a similar sequence can apply. In addition, project phases are not only collections of logically related activities; each phase also requires the right mindset to conceptualize, elaborate the design, detail the implementation, and verify and validate the result.
Phases: Objectives, Activities, and Exit Criteria
| CONCEPT | DESIGN | ENGINEERING | VALIDATION | |
| OBJECTIVE | Define the problem and identify a potential solution. | Translate the concept into a detailed manufacturing prescription. | Optimize the design for functionality and manufacturability. | Ensure that final product meets user needs, Performance standards and Regulatory requirements |
| ACTIVITIES | Market research, needs analysis, proof-of-concept work, and feasibility assessment. | CAD models, drawings, material selection, simulation, and detailed testing. | Build prototypes as designed, test against requirements, and optimize for manufacturing. | Validation testing, regulatory compliance testing, and optimization of the manufacturing setup. |
| EXIT CRITERIA | Basic prototypes and concept validation. | Functional prototype and design validation. | Final prototype and engineering validation. | Agreed production quantity and product validation. |
Economics of the Phase-Gate Approach
Phase-Gate approach progressively reduces risk. Decisions made during the concept phase have the greatest impact on product success, while their effect on total project cost is still relatively low. At this stage, fewer team members are typically required, but they must be highly capable. Resource commitments from development and design functions typically increase substantially during the design and engineering phases, then decline during validation. During validation, additional support may be required from manufacturing and marketing.
Figure 4 below shows how project impact and resource contribution change across the phases.
Figure 4
Scope of Product Development
As used in this post, product development does not refer only to creating entirely new products. It also includes maintenance and sustenance work, such as addressing component obsolescence and adding features. In some cases, substantial development effort may also be required to meet legal and statutory requirements in new geographic regions, adapt products to different environmental conditions, or comply with new regulations. Most of the suggestions in this post apply to those projects as well.
Summary and Key Takeaways
- Resources, tools, and best practices: Product development depends on capable teams, appropriate tools, and disciplined professional practices.
- Methodology: The development process should use a fit-for-purpose methodology, including clear verification and validation activities.
- Needs and requirements: Project management must balance customer and stakeholder needs with cost and time-to-market constraints.
- Economics: The greatest leverage comes early, when teams can reduce risk before resource commitments rise in later phases.
How does your organization define and protect the concept phase, and what consequences have you seen when that discipline is missing?