1.Planning :
Before starting a project, planning as an activity plays a significant role on project success or failure. This includes all the aspects of NPD like
a. Understanding the customer's requirement clearly by involving all stakeholders in the projects and understanding the requirements
c. Planning of time horizon and risk involved
d. Planning of resources, competency and risk involved
e. Planning of expenses both capex and revex, the risk involved
f. Planning of conversion process either in-house and outsource
g. Planning of communication / MIS / KPI's and review mechanism
When we do not plan of above activities, by nature, we face the failure modes while executing the projects. Managing the failure modes during execution takes more time, cost and affect the product quality than during the planning stage.
2.Identification of project leader:
Even though NPD is a cross-functional activity, it is very much essential to identify a person as a project leader who is accountable for coordinating and existing the product development.
As we witnessed in most of the small and emerging organizations, NPD is driven by technology or design person. It is nothing wrong with driving by those people, they need to ensure the development completes successfully until it meets the customer's scope, cost, and time aspects.
It is advisable one person can play a role as project lead and coordinate all functions with more focus on internal and external deliverables.
3.Formation of a cross-functional team:
As said in the project lead, the establishment of a cross-functional team with a focus on product delivery is vital to speed up the NPD process. Typically, the people involved in the NPD are more oriented towards their functional ROUTINE activities, and NPD gets second priority. The reason could be organizations are wired and encouraged for functional or departmental success or deliverables rather than product delivery success which relies on many functions. To bring organizational focus on NPD, it is advisable to form core cross-functional team members who will be working on the project till it ends under the guidance of both project lead and technical lead.
4.Change Management :
Unlike Operations, New product development as a project calls for a lot of changes during execution. The change will come from either the customer or internal stakeholders. The challenge for the project lead and team is to manage the changes.
The critical challenge for all of us is how to manage the change and its impact than avoiding the change at all as it is impossible in a project environment.
This calls for proactiveness and experience in predicting the changes or risks and managing the changes. In mature organizations, there is a review forum, wherein the project team is encouraged to present the changes and its impact in a professional way. When the environment is created to discuss and review the changes and its effect on cost, scope, and timeline, eventually either team is getting involved proactively in the development process at the early stage and thereby reducing the possible changes that happen during the execution.
5.Top Management involvement :
Senior management's involvement in the NPD process is critical for the success. In my opinion, the involvement can be demonstrated by conducting fixed, preplanned reviews of the NPD progress along with project leader and team members. Periodic reviews of project status and taking timely decisions on important factors like scope, cost and any other people related issues or any other risks will save the NPD from failures.
The Top management can design suitable Management information system about the project with Key performance indicators at the initial stage of the project and tracking during the execution will save a lot of time of all and also improve the communication process among the team and shareholders.
Since unlike operations, NPD process itself is uncertain and risk involved, the team gets demotivated whenever there is a slowdown in progress. It is natural and the top management involvement and motivating the team behind helps the team to work with more enthusiasm.
In a nutshell, top management involvement through reviews of KPI's, timely decision on any risk, motivating the team are critical to the success of NPD.
As said, the project is all about managing the risk and people. Realising this fundamental, smart organizations adopt project management approach in New product development process and we have seen the improvement in the quality of execution. However, it takes time, and commitment of all stakeholders as delivering new product seamlessly is a way of working or culture building process!
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