4 Tips to Make Communication More Effective During Product Development
Product development isn’t a one-man show. It’s a team effort, and it requires teamwork, cooperation, coordination, and above all, communication. If your product development team can’t communicate, your project is doomed before it even gets going. To facilitate effective communication during the product development process, check out these tips and tricks.
Get specific
Ambiguity and vague ideas do not facilitate clear communication. Always be specific. Need something done? Give your team data and a time. Is your prototype not working properly? Explain what is wrong with it and how it needs to be fixed. Is one of your team members constantly arriving to meetings late? Explain why it is problem, and specify that you expect them to fix the behavior. Communicating with clarity is absolutely crucial. Remember, simple and concise is always better than long and complex. Nobody wants to navigate through your convoluted sentences. Don’t beat around the bush. Get to the point and convey yourself with as much clarity and brevity as possible.
Know what you are talking about
Always speak from an informed position. If you don’t know something, say so. Don’t just invent things. In order to facilitate effective communication, your team needs to know that they can trust what you say.
Listen
In order to effectively communicate, you don’t just need to know how to talk, you need to know how to listen. Simply broadcasting your message ad nauseum isn’t going to do much. You need to engage your team in meaningful, productive conversations. And in order to do that, you need to be able to listen. Don’t just listen to what people are saying — you need to be able to read between the lines. Astute leaders are able to take into account what is said as much as they are able to take into account what is.
Be polite
People will typically not be all too receptive to your idea if you are conveying it in a mean, condescending, or obnoxious way. Speak with respect and treat your team with integrity, and hold them to the same standards. You want an environment that encourages communication, not one that discourages it. People are all the more likely to come to you with a problem or share a great idea if they know that what they have to say will be met with respect.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
Tips for Developing an Eco-Friendly Product
From carbon footprints to water conservation, consumers are increasingly worried about the impact they are leaving on the earth, and are looking to purchase products that can help them mitigate that impact.
Environmentally Friendly Product Desing Tips
Follow these tips to design a more eco-friendly product.
Reduce transportation
The sale of products involves a lot of transportation. Raw materials must be transported to the factory, and finished products must be transported from the factory to the market. Of course, all that transportation requires fuel. In many cases, raw material extraction, manufacturing, and consumer sales may all take place on different continents, subsequently driving up fuel needs and exponentially increasing the environmental impact of your product.
Whenever possible, you want to keep extraction, production, and sales as close together as possible. However, in some case logistics make this simply impossible. If it is necessary that raw materials or finished products travel long distances, it is best to opt for travel via sea or rail. Products that are distributed by road or air have a larger impact than those transported by sea or rail.
Choose materials wisely
Eco-friendly materials are arguably the cornerstones of any green product. Never use more materials than are absolutely necessary, and always choose low-maintenance fabrics and materials. Believe it or not, washing and dry cleaning actually take a significant environmental toll on the earth. Last, but not least, don’t let any materials go to waste.
Think about what happens at the end of your product’s lifecycle
Nothing lasts forever, not even the best products. Overall, the goal should be to make your product last as long as possible, which means choosing materials and opting for designs that maximize durability. When consumers constantly go through poorly-constructed, flimsy goods, their consumption increases (as they need to constantly keep replacing flimsy products), which in turn, drives up resource demand and consumption. The entire goal of eco-friendly product design is precisely to lessen that demand and consumption. The longer a product lasts, the better it is for the environment.
When it is time for your product to be retired, the goal is to try and ensure that your product doesn’t just end up rotting in some landfill somewhere at the end of its lifecycle. A great idea is to take your product back once a consumer has put it to rest. Let customers trade it in when they are finished with it, and you can re-construct it into something new or donate it to charity. Not only will you win major points with your eco-conscious consumers, but recycling will also help you improve your bottom line. If recycling isn’t a possibility, try to mitigate the damage your product will do to the earth in a landmine. It is generally advisable to avoid organic materials such as wood, as when in a landfill, these products will tend to mix with other substances and produce methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
The 4 Most Common Product Development Mistakes
The product design and product manufacturing process can sometimes be confusing and is not without many obstacles and roadblocks.
Product Development Mistakes
To make things a bit easier on the road from product development to market, be sure to avoid these four classic mistakes.
1. Lack of communication between industrial designers and engineers
In order for a product to be highly functional, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to use, your industrial designers and engineers need to be able to effectively work together, and that means effectively communicating. When these two parties are in sync, you have the best shot of meeting your time to market goal and cost objectives.
How do you get these two groups on the same page? The engineering team needs to communicate the product architecture constraints, and the product design team needs to communicate the design constraints. The two teams then need to evaluate the other’s constraints and develop a plan accordingly. Please keep in mind that an unbiased program manager should be brought in to mediate any conflicting constraints by using the established program priorities list (and on another note, if you don’t have program priorities list, you need to make one!).
2. Creativity without restraint
There’s nothing wrong with creativity. Without it, James Joyce probably would have written Ulysses, and Van Gogh probably wouldn’t have painted Starry Nights. With that being said, however, let’s all pause for a moment and remember that creativity also led Van Gogh to infamously cut off his own ear. Creativity is good, but creativity excess isn’t so good, especially when it isn’t balanced with practicality and restraint. You don’t necessarily want to become the Van Gogh of product design, so before you let your imagination run wild, it is absolutely essential to consider practical constraints, including timeline and budget.
3. Disregarding design for manufacturing
Design for Manufacturing, or DFM, is a method of preparing product design for manufacturing by utilizing the specific rules and requirements for each of the fabrication technologies to be used. DFM is highly advantageous, and yields higher-quality products at a lower cost. However, in order to effectively execute a DFM plan, you need to prepare accordingly. That means integrating manufacturing engineers with the development team, discussing DFM throughout the design process, and implementing DFM into the initial design review discussion.
4. Getting emotionally attached to a product
No matter how much you might love your product idea, remember, it is a business. If a business isn’t working, it is necessary to A) make changes, or B) abandon the idea. It’s good to be passionate about what you are creating, but when people get too emotionally invested in their product, it trends to cloud their judgment. You should always be able to take a few steps back and objectively analyze the situation — it’s critical to your success.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
When to Call in a Product Development Expert
There is no beating around the bush: product development is no easy feat. It is a process fraught with challenges and obstacles. Though it is incredibly rewarding, it can be incredibly challenging and frustrating—and that is completely normal. If the going gets too tough, however, it can be advantageous to bring in an expert so you can mitigate the risk of lost time, labor, and resources.
Do you need a product development expert?
How do you know when you are in over your head? If you are struggling with any of the four following situations, it is probably time to call in a product development expert.
You’re having trouble facilitating communication between teams
Successful product development means facilitating collaboration and communication between the numerous different teams involved in the product development process, including designers, engineers, marketers, etc. Tension or conflict between these teams is a red flag. If you can’t resolve things yourself, you will need to bring in a project management expert with meditation experience.
You’re having trouble managing costs
Staying within budget is just as important as producing an innovative product. If you can’t stay within budget during the development process, you put your ROI in jeopardy and you could end up putting your entire business in the red. Of course, staying on budget is much easier said than done, especially if you don’t have a background in budgets or accounting. If your development costs are skyrocketing and you don’t understand why, or lack any clear ideas on how to trim things back, it is probably a wise idea to call an expert.
You’re developing a product for a foreign market
Developing a product for a foreign market is a whole different kind of ball game. If you lack the language skills or cultural knowledge required for success in your target market, you’re going to need to bring in a product development expert (ideally one who has experience and expertise in your target geographical area). Remember, foreign market product development presents a number of logistical challenges. The bottom line is that the development process requires in-depth knowledge of local consumers, for both developing and marketing purposes. If you don’t know the culture of your target consumer, bring in someone who does.
You don’t understand your industry’s regulatory standards
In many industries, such as the medical or pharmaceutical industries, for example, there are legal and regulatory standards that a product must meet before it goes on the market. If you don’t understand your industry’s standards you need to call in someone who does. Otherwise, you run the risk of developing and manufacturing a product that will never be approved by your industry’s regulating bodies, and that certainly isn’t a risk you should want to take. After all, what is the point of pouring all of that time, money, and effort into product development if at the end of it all you can’t sell your product because it doesn’t adequately meet industry criteria?
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
Six Numbers Every Product Developer Should Know
Product development is complex. Before you jump into the product development process, make sure you have a clear understanding of the following numbers.
COGS
COGS refers to Cost of Goods Sold. Remember, you need to make more than the COGS per a product in order to achieve a positive ROI. Keep in mind that COGS can be calculated in a number of different ways.
P&L
P&L refers to profit and loss. It is essentially a basic money in / money out calculation. It allows you to see how much money your product costs to manufacture, versus how much it will bring in in sales.
ROI
ROI refers to Return on Investment. It is calculated by subtracting product production costs from anticipated product revenue. Obviously, anticipated product revenue will depend on sales numbers. Therefore, it is advisable to calculate various ROIs — one of the best case, worst case, and average case scenarios.
SVA
SVA refers to Shareholder Value Added. It essentially measures the value a new product adds to your business for your business’s shareholders. The more SVA a new product will add to your company, the more worthwhile it is to develop that product.
Cannibalization
When a new product eats up the sales of your pre-existing products, it is called “cannibalization.” While it is difficult to ascertain a precise number for this specific phenomenon, it is something that every product developer needs to consider. Keep in mind there are several things you can do in order to mitigate the risk of cannibalization, including properly planning release and launch cycles, as well as properly planning marketing and advertising campaigns.
Cycle Time
Cycle Time refers to the length of time it takes to deliver a new product, from idea inception to commercialization. Understanding and appropriately managing the cycle time is key, in part because it allows you to appropriately plan a launch date and tailor marketing and advertising strategies around that launch date.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
Role of Social Media in Product Development Process
According to research by Crimson Hexagon, 93 percent of digital marketing and advertising professionals believe that utilizing social media as a mechanism for customer feedback can be an invaluable resource when it comes to product design development. The bottom line is that social media is an invaluable tool in the development process, providing developers with insight into consumer behavior and consumer preferences. Here is how you can harness the power of social media during the product development process.
Pose relevant questions
Social media can be a highly effective way to illicit valuable customer feedback. For example, in the spring of 2009 airline AirTran asked customers via social media, “What do you think should be on every AirTran flight?” At the time, the company was looking for input on which new services to offer on flights, and subsequently turned to consumers for a bit of guidance. The company collected ballots and tallied up the responses. The answer was clear: AirTran fliers wanted WiFi on every AirTran flight. Today, every single AirTran flight offers WiFi.
Harness social data
Social media is essentially a data mine, and if companies are astute, they can mine social media for valuable insight into consumer behaviors and preferences. However, in order to harness the power of social media, brands need to be tuned into conversations that are going on about the online. Dell, for example, monitors more than 25,000 posts about their company every single day through a social media listening command center. This data is divvied up into a wide variety of reports that inform the company as a whole, as well as its consumer, small and medium business, public sector, and large enterprise and services business segments. Dell also tunes into competitors’ conversations about topics that could affect market issues. Certainly, every piece of customer feedback regarding a brand’s offerings, whether positive, neutral, or negative, is important. But repetition and general sentiment trending about product design topics and service issues can provide insight into overall customer sentiment. It is this data that can show different trends in consumer opinions, trends that can be leveraged during the development process.
Solicit participation
Last but not least, social media can be an excellent way to facilitate consumer participation in the social media development process. For example, when PepsiCo decided to develop a new product for Saudi Arabia, they offered customers the opportunity to name the new product via voting on several different social media sites. Brand engagement soared, and the tactic got customers talking about the new product. Soliciting participation is an excellent way to get customers enthused about new products, which makes them more likely to make a purchase.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
The Secret of Tracking Product Development Progress – Here’s How to Do It
Effective product development requires a clearly delineated timeline. There is nothing worse than having an approaching launch date without a product that is ready to go.
How to track Product Development Progress
The key to success is to set small goals and consistently track your progress to ensure that you are on track to meet big deadlines. Be sure to keep the following benchmarks and metrics in mind throughout the product development process.
Develop small deadlines
Development is often a long and windy road. Without clear benchmarkers along the path, it is easy to lose sight of the end goal and get lost along the way. A far-off product launch date is not what should guide your day-to-day activities. Instead, break everything down into smaller deadlines. The key is to make these deadlines absolutely. If your team thinks that the deadlines you impose are flexible or negotiable, that’s a recipe for tardiness. So be resolute and be stern. If something is due on a Thursday at 1:00 pm, it shouldn’t be done a second later than that.
Create tasks to accompany deadlines
Again, breaking things down into smaller units is the key to success. Create a list of tasks that must be accomplished in order to make the deadline. Put a project manager in charge to follow up and fix roadblocks so that team members can easily see how much needs to be done before a deadline and budget their time accordingly. Furthermore, it also allows team members to easily measure their progress toward a goal. It can definitely be a good idea to post these tasks to an online task board so everyone can visualize progress. You could also set up a whiteboard in the office.
Establish a burn chart
Burn charts can be a great way for the team to see how many tasks remain in a given project, and how the tasks are progressing over time. The y-axis is typically used to represent project scope, while time is tracked on the x-axis. Use one line to represent the ideal number of tasks remaining (according to your pre-established development timeline) and another to track the actual number of tasks remaining. This allows the team to clearly visualize whether or not they are on track (and if they aren’t how far behind they actually are). It is an excellent way to keep everyone on the same page and way to keep motivation high.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
5 Personalities You Need on Your Product Development Team
When it comes to product development, it is easier to have a capable and competent team on your side than to go it alone. But how can you craft the perfect team?
The Perfect Product Development Team
When it comes time to pick your product developement team
players, try to make sure you have one of each of the following.
The charismatic leader
Every product development teams needs an adept leader — someone who can organize, inspire, and provide direction. Effective leaders will typically have excellent communication ideas that enable them to fluidly express even the most complex ideas in terms that are clear and easy for the average person to understand. When the team runs into obstacles, it is the leader’s responsibility to project management teams through the problem.
The seasoned veteran
When you are developing a new product, it is always a good idea to have a product development veteran on your side. The seasoned veteran can provide valuable insight into the dilemmas that a team is likely to encounter when developing a new product. He or she can use this experience to help the team navigate around these obstacles and prevent the team from making decisions that could prove to be unprofitable or inexperienced.
The financial guru
When it comes to product development, success is more than just a great idea. No matter how fantastic and innovative a product idea is, your product is doomed to fail before it even becomes a tangible good if it doesn’t make financial success. The financial guru on your team should be able to translate broad ideas and vague suggestions into actual numbers. Basically, your financial guru should be able to take a good, hard look at an idea and give it a value. He or she should be able to tell you how much production would cost, how much consumer demand
there is for the product, and how much you would be able to charge for the product.
The innovative dreamer
It is no secret that innovation is the key to a good product. Dreamers are unafraid of risk or failure and are always seeking fresh and innovative solutions to common problems. Let the mind of a dreamer run wild and he or she will provide of a flood of creative ideas. The key is to balance the unhampered creativity of the innovative dreamer with the financial expertise of the financial guru and the know-how of the seasoned veteran.
The industry expert
While it’s great to have creativity on your side, you also need expertise. The industry expert is able to provide specific, relevant information about your industry and target market. He or she can help sure that the team makes smart choices that will ensure industry success.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
The Secret of Product Development – How to Brainstorm Great Ideas
In our modern, fast-moving economy companies constantly need to stay at the forefront of innovation in order to stay competitive. According to The Economist‘s Innovation Survey, roughly half of the US economy’s current growth comes from companies that didn’t exist 10 years ago. As the saying goes, companies either innovate or die, and in order to keep up, great products are a necessity.
Ways to Brainstorm Product Development Ideas
The key to developing a great product is a great idea, but coming up with a great is easier said than done. When it comes time for a company-wide brainstorm session, keep the following tips and tricks in mind.
Get out of the office
When you are scheduling a brainstorming session, a meeting around the conference table might not be the way to go. A change of scenery can go a long way when you are trying to get your team’s creative juices flowing. Employees and bosses tend to adopt specific patterned behaviors according their roles when in the office. A change of location can help employees move out of their traditional roles and routinized behaviors and result in new patterns of interaction, perspectives, and ideas. Whether you take your team for a walk along the beach or to the park for a picnic, getting out of the office can be incredibly advantageous when it comes to brainstorming.
Make sure the decision makers are in the room
Steven Pritzker, a professor of psychology at Saybrook University and an expert on the creative process, contends that the brainstorming dynamic virtually always improves when key decision makers are in the room. Pritzker was actually a television comedy writer before he joined the ranks of academia. Episodes were always written in teams, and he explains that the brainstorming and development process was much more dynamic when the well-respected decision makers were in the room. “They were competent, and they weren’t afraid to go with something unusual if they liked it,” Pritzker says. “And if they didn’t, they weren’t afraid to say that it didn’t work for them.” This kind of quick, yay or nay approach to ideas can make the brainstorming process fast-paced, ensuring that it doesn’t lose momentum.
Always keep pen and paper nearby
Great ideas are elusive. You never when one might strike you. That’s why it’s always a good idea to be prepared. After all, great ideas are fleeting so it’s a good idea to write them down. There’s nothing worse than going out on a morning jog and having a great idea strike you while you’re three miles from home, only to not be able to remember it once you’re back. A good trick is to keep a couple of index cards and a pen in your pocket or purse so that they are always on hand whenever you might need them.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
How to Avoid Delays in Product Development
When it comes to product development, delays are never good. They can drive up costs, cut into profit, and detrimentally impact consumer satisfaction. So, here’s how you can avoid them.
Product Development Plan
In order to avoid delays you need to know what needs to get done and when, and you need to hold your team accountable for deadlines. The easy way to do that is to develop a timeline. An extra trick? Give your team a date that is earlier than the date you’ve given the public. It will give you a bit of leeway should something go wrong.
Automate processes as much as you can
The bottom line? Automating saves time. If you don’t have to manually do something, don’t. Continuous deployment and configuration management tools help you save time when you are on a time schedule and prevent unnecessary delays.
Don’t stick to a single development plan
Your development plan should be product-driven. Companies often have a single, across the board development plan, but this isn’t necessarily the best way to do things. More often than not this causes organizations to develop a tunnel vision toward product development that does not fit changing customer needs. You will want to be able to alter a development plan based on market demands, customer needs, and, of course, time constraints.
Research optimal batch size
When you are trying to get a new product on the market, you need to decide how much of the product you are going to produce. Don’t just assume that a large batch (or a small one, for that matter) is a good idea. Do the research. Consider both holding costs and transaction costs. For work-in-progress development models, small batches are almost always a better idea, and can help you save time.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
