At MIDIOR, we view product development and technology development as two distinct processes. Our definition of product development is, “the comprehensive process of strategy, organization, concept generation, product and marketing plan development that results in the creation and commercialization of a new product or service.” Technology development, on the other hand, is a specific engineering discipline with tightly defined sequential steps that lead to a new product release or a new capability.

Successful product development is never easy. Every new development effort is unique in terms of goals, obstacles and unexpected changes in requirements that emerge along the way. As an organic process, product development requires different areas of focus at different points in time. Throw in the complexities of rapidly changing technologies, accelerating life cycles, vague definitions of target markets and you have a real management challenge on your hands.

Four barriers to product success
Too often technology development is focused on solving the difficult technical problem rather than creating a design that will support successful commercialization. At MIDIOR, we have identified four barriers to the adoption of new products and services which, if not addressed in the initial design, can make a good product go bad. These four barriers relate to product integration in the customer’s environment, meaningful information about the product, deployment across a customer’s organizational boundaries and a demand for change-in-behavior in the way a customer does business. Any one of these barriers can inhibit product adoption. Developers need to understand what the customer will do with the product in their environment and account for these potential barriers as they design and develop the product.

By overcoming these four barriers, MIDIOR helps companies become better at product development. But how do you measure improvement in the product development process? Does it mean a greater number of new products? More revenues or profits from new products? Faster development cycle times for new product releases? Depending on the company and industry, some or all of these measures may be appropriate.

It’s the people, not the process
Many companies believe that implementing a specific product development process (Stagegate or Time-phased process, as examples) will result in better product development. At MIDIOR, we recognize that getting better at product development has everything to do with professionalizing the discipline and identifying the right people, filling the right roles, forming the right teams, building the right skills and promoting a product-centric culture focused on business outcomes.

Although we are agnostic to particular product development methodologies, we do agree that companies that have a process are doing better than those that rely on chaos and heroic effort to deliver results. Too many development teams and managers view the process as an obstacle that must be overcome rather than a tool that can be used for marshalling company resources. And, all too often, product development processes become brakes, not accelerators, because gates and phases make it is all too easy to remove the dependencies on people. Relying on a process, rather than the instrumentality of individuals and teams, results in a diminished capacity for innovation, agility and creativity. Processes are good at preventing bad things from happening, or reducing exposure to mistakes, but they are less valuable, and often counterproductive, to getting the right things to happen.

At MIDIOR, we believe that the key to more effective and efficient product development is to build a team that truly understands any existing process, knows how to take advantage of the process and is facile with the discipline.

MIDIOR product development services are classified into planning, implementation and skills development: