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Product Development Strategy

Product Portfolio Strategy

We start by clarifying the company¶s strategy and business model. We then
work with your organization and customer base to develop a clear and
achievable product strategy for growing your business. We evaluate the
competitive landscape, identify the organization¶s core competencies, and
use our extensive product development expertise to align your product and
business strategy. Once the product and corporate goals are aligned, we will
help your organization to utilize limited resources and to prioritize the
multitude of products and features that the organization and customer base
demand. We consider business strategy, skill scarcity, development costs,
time-to-market and revenue implications. As a result, effective program
management can be used to drive your product priorities and timelines on
an on-going basis, within and across product lines.
 A long-term and evolving view of value lets you make better investments.

Product Development Process

Our team¶s extensive experience in and knowledge of the product
development lifecycle will help you optimize your product development
process and infrastructure. We can show you how to define product
requirements efficiently, how to communicate and validate them before the
product is built, and how to ³go live´ more quickly. Results can include
reduced costs, improved time-to-market, greater market share, and
stronger customer relationships.
 Develop a clear process that encourages innovation and customer service
while delivering time-to-market and profitability

Most organizations have embraced "Speed-to-Market" as a key to excellence in new product development. To gain true
competitive advantage, two complementary factors should be added to the push for speed throughout the new product
development process. The first is "Strategic Impact." This includes such measures as increased revenue, greater market
share, profit gain, and improved customer satisfaction. If a new product development output provides little strategic
impact, the fact that it accomplished rapidly may be inconsequential.

The second factor is "Resource-Use Efficiency." This includes such measures as man-days-to-complete and incremental
cost of development. It is about using your resources as best you can, for the both speed and strategic impact.
Competitiveness requires organizational efficiency. The bottom line is that the correct emphasis on speed, strategic impact,
and resource-use efficiency is needed in order to advance the organization.
Implementation initiatives that drive strategic impact and resource use efficiency, however, can be at odds with the forces
that push speed. Often, speed or time-to-market initiatives are well entrenched in organizations. All organizations desire
an NPD process that delivers new products with greater strategic impact, using far less resources, and doing it all faster
than ever. But wanting it and establishing the best new product development process are entirely different.

World-class organizations embrace strategic impact, resource-use efficiency, and speed-to-market« concurrently. To do
this, though, they must deploy and streamline six complementary NPD processes.

New Product Development Process Components

1.c Product Line Planning (and Technology and Market Roadmapping)

2.c New Concept Generation
3.c Concept Feasibility and Assessment (Market & Technical)
4.c Stage-Gate Development
5.c Product Management (Lifecycle and Retirement)
6.c Portfolio and Pipeline Management

Establishing or implementing this full, front-end to back-end, new product development process architecture in a timely
manner is critical to driving the productivity of innovation investments.

As one Adept Group client said, "A front-end to back-end NPD Process is the goose that lays the golden eggs of
innovation."

If your organization seeks meaningful and strategic gains from a new product development process, please contact us. We
would be glad to describe the nuances of these processes in detail and discuss how your organization can benefit from
them quickly.

wmplementing NPD Processes

The Adept Group expertly guides organizations through implementations for full Front-to-Back NPD architectures as
well as for individual sub-processes including:

uc ¯ront-end Product Line Planning and Roadmapping (Linked to Business Strategy)

uc ¯ront-end New Concept Generation
uc ¯ront-end Concept ¯easibility Assessment
uc Streamlined Stage-gate Development Process
uc NPD Portfolio and Pipeline Management
uc Back-end Lifecycle Management

¯ront to Back Development Architecture

Our objective when helping to implement NPD processes is to:

Accelerate the accrual of desired benefits

To do this, The Adept Group uses best-in-class practices in process as well as best-in-class practices in design and
deployment. Our research and benchmarking among numerous organizations shows that how organizations
implement is as important as what they implement.

Good versus Poor Implementation

 gow you implement is as important as what you implement.

Workflow, decision-flow, and information-flow for each NPD sub-process must be designed, deployed, and then
used. Adept works with client organizations by coupling best-in-class processes with best-in-class implementation
methods. Our work includes top management involvement through facilitated workout sessions, detailed design and
deployment project planning, full design ssistance, documentation and templates, facilitated team meetings, train-
the-trainer, systems support and integration planning, sub-process and practices integration, and just-in-time NPD
project assistance.