Development Processes and Organizations

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Chapter 2

• Development Processes and Organizations

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Learning Objectives

• Is there a standard development process that will
  work for every company?
• What role do experts from different functional
  areas play in the development process?
• What milestones can be used to divide the overall
  development process into phases?
• Should the development organization be divided
  into groups corresponding to projects or to
  development functions?

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Usefulness of a well-defined Development Process

• Quality assurance
• Coordination
• Planning
• Performance Management
• Improvement

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Six Phases of the Generic Development Process

• Planning
• Concept development
• System-Level design
• Detail design
• Testing and refinement
• Production ramp-up

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Planning

• Often referred to as phase zero since it
  precedes the project approval and launch of the
  actual product development process.
• Output Target market, business goals, key
  assumptions and constraints.

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Concept Development

• Needs of the target market are identified,
  alternative products concepts are generated and
  evaluated, and one more concepts are selected for
  further development and testing.

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System-level Design

• Includes the definition of the product
  architecture and the decomposition of the product
  into subsystems and components.
• The final assembly scheme for the production
  system is usually defined during this phase.

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Detail Design

• Includes complete product specifications such as
  tolerances, materials, geometry, etc.
• Specifications of the purchased parts
• Process plans and assembly plans of the product
  defined
• Tooling defined

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Testing and Refinement

• Involves construction and evaluation of several
  preproduction versions of the product
• Early (alpha) prototypes Usually built with
  production-intent parts -- parts with the same
  geometry and material properties as the
  production version but not necessarily fabricated
  with the actual processes to be used in
  production.
• Alpha prototypes tested to determine whether (a)
  the product will work as designed and (b) product
  satisfies key customer needs.

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Testing and Refinement

• Beta prototypes are usually built with parts
  supplied by the intended production processes but
  may not be assembled using the intended final
  assembly process.
• Beta prototypes used to answer questions about
  performance and reliability in order to identify
  necessary engineering changes.

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Production ramp-up

• The product is made using the intended production
  system.
• Purpose is to train the work force and weed out
  any remaining problems in the production
  processes
• Transition from ramp-up to normal production is
  gradual

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The Generic Product Development Process
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Concept Development Activities

• Identifying customer needs
• Establishing target specifications
• Concept generation
• Concept selection
• Concept testing
• Setting final specifications
• Project planning
• Economic analysis
• Benchmarking of competitive products
• Modeling and prototyping

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Identifying customer needs

• The goal of this activity is to understand
  customers needs and to effectively communicate
  them to the development team.
• Output organized customer needs list, importance
  rating for each need

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Establishing target specifications

• Specifications provide a precise description of
  what a product has to do. They are translation of
  the customer needs into technical terms.
• Targets for the specifications are set early in
  the process and represent the hopes of the
  development team.

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Concept generation

• The goal is to thoroughly explore the space of
  product concepts that may address the customer
  needs
• Concept generation includes a mix of internal and
  external search
• Output Usually a set of 10-20 concepts, each
  typically represented by a sketch and brief
  descriptive text

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Concept selection

• Concept selection is the activity in which
  various product concepts are analyzed and
  sequentially eliminated to identify the most
  promising concept(s).

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Concept testing

• One or more concepts are tested to verify that
  the customer needs have been met, assess the
  market potential of the product, and identify any
  shortcomings.

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Setting final specifications

• The target specifications set earlier in the
  process are revisited after a concept has been
  selected and tested.

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Project planning

• The team creates a detailed development schedule,
  devises a strategy to minimize development time,
  and identifies the resources required to complete
  the project.
• Major results of the front-end activities are
  captured in a contract book which contains the
  mission statement, the customer needs, the detail
  of the selected concept, the product
  specifications, the economic analysis of the
  product, the development schedule, the project
  staffing, and the budget.

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Economic analysis

• The team often with the support of a financial
  analyst, builds an economic model for the new
  product.
• This model is used to justify continuation of the
  overall development program and to resolve
  specific trade-off among, for example,
  development costs and manufacturing costs.

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Benchmarking of competitive products

• An understanding of competitive products is
  critical to successful positioning of a new
  product and can provide a rich source of ideas
  for the product and production process design.

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Modeling and prototyping

• Every stage of the concept development process
  involves various forms of models and prototypes.
  These may include, among others early
  proof-of-concept models, which help the
  development team to demonstrate feasibility
  form-only models, which can be shown to
  customers to evaluate ergonomics and style and
  spreadsheet models of technical trade-offs.

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Adapting the Generic Product Development Process

• Technology-push product
• Platform products
• Process-intensive products
• Customized products

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Technology-Push Products

• The firm begins with a new proprietary technology
  and looks for an appropriate market in which to
  apply this technology
• Gore-Tex (an expanded Teflon sheet) manufactured
  by W.L. Gore Associates

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Technology-Push Products

• Many extremely successful products have arisen
  from technology-push development
• This approach is unlikely to succeed unless -
  the assumed technology offers a clear competitive
  advantage
• - suitable alternative technologies are
  unavailable or very difficult for competitors to
  utilize.

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Platform Products

• A platform product is built around a preexisting
  technological subsystem ( a Technology Platform).
  
• Examples tape transport mechanism in the Sony
  Walkman, the Apple Macintosh OS
• Huge investments were made in developing these
  platforms, and therefore every attempt is made to
  incorporate them into several different products.

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Platform Products

• Differences between Technology Push Platform
  products
• a technology platform has already demonstrated
  its usefulness in the marketplace in meeting
  customer needs
• Products built on technology platforms are much
  simpler to develop than if the technology were
  developed from scratch.

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Process Intensive Products

• Examples of process-intensive products include
  semiconductors, foods, chemicals, and paper.
• In many cases, process-intensive products are
  produced in very high volumes and are bulk, as
  opposed to discrete goods.

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Customized Products

• Examples switches, motors, batteries, and
  containers.
• Slight variations of standard configurations and
  typically developed in response to a specific
  order by a customer.
• Development of customized products consists
  primarily of setting values of design variables
  such as physical dimensions.

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Variants of Generic Development Process
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Product Development Organizations

• Organizations are formed by establishing formal
  or informal links among individuals
• Reporting relationships Reporting relationships
  give rise to the classic notion of supervisor and
  subordinate.
• Financial arrangements Individuals are linked by
  being part of the same financial entity, such as
  that defined by a particular budget category or
  profit-and-loss statement.
• Physical Layout links are created between
  individuals when they share the same office,
  floor, building, or site.

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Product Development Organizations

• Regardless of their organizational links,
  particular individuals can be classified in two
  different ways according to their function and
  according to the projects they work on.

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Product Development Organizations

• A function (in organizational terms) is an area
  of responsibility usually involving specialized
  education, training, or experience.
• Regardless of their functions, individuals apply
  their expertise to specific projects.
• In product development, a project is the set of
  activities in the development process for a
  particular product.

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Functional Project Organizations

• In functional organizations, the organizational
  links are primarily among those who perform
  similar functions.
• In project organizations, the organizational
  links are primarily among those who work on the
  same project.

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Matrix Organizations

• The matrix organization was conceived as a hybrid
  of functional and project organizations.
• In the matrix organization, individuals are
  linked to others according to both the project
  they work on and their function.
• Typically each individual has two supervisors,
  one a project manager and one a functional
  manager.

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Variants of the matrix organization

• Heavyweight project organization
• Lightweight project organization.
• A heavy weight project organization contains
  strong project links.

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Various Product Development Organizations
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Choosing an Organizational Structure

• The most appropriate choice of organizational
  structure depends on which organizational
  performance factors are most critical to success.
  
• Functional organizations tend to breed
  specialization and deep expertise in the
  functional areas.
• Project organizations tend to enable rapid and
  effective coordination among diverse functions.

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Choosing an Organizational Structure

• How important is cross-functional integration?
• How critical is cutting-edge functional expertise
  to business success?
• Can individuals from each function be fully
  utilized for most of the duration of a project?
• How important is product development speed?

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Characteristics of Different Organizational
Structure