"P" Flashcards
Pareto Chart
A bar graph with the bars sorted in descending order used to identify the largest opportunity for improvement. Pareto charts distinguish the “vital few” from the “useful many.”
Participatory Design
A democratic approach to design that does not simply make potential users the subjects of user testing, but empowers them to be a part of the design and decision-making process.
Payback
The time, usually in years, from some point in the development process until the commercialized product or service has recovered its costs of development and marketing. While some firms take the point of full-scale market introduction of a new product as the starting point, others begin the clock at the start of development expense.
Payout
The amount of profits and their timing expected from commercializing a new product.
Perceptual Mapping
A quantitative market research tool used to understand how customers think of current and future products. Perceptual maps are visual representations of the positions that sets of products hold in consumers’ minds.
Performance Indicators
Criteria on which the performance of a new product in the market are evaluated. (See Chapter 29 of The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition).
Performance Measurement System
The system that enables the firm to monitor the relevant performance indicators of new products in the appropriate time frame.
Performance/Satisfaction Surveys
A particular type of market research tool in which respondents are asked to evaluate how well a particular product or service is performing and/or how satisfied they are with that product or service on a specific list of attributes. It is often useful to ask respondents to evaluate more than one product or service on these attributes in order to be able to compare them and to better understand what they like and dislike about one versus the other. In this way, this information can become a key input to the development process for next generation product modifications.
PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique)
An event-oriented network analysis technique used to estimate project duration when there is a high degree of uncertainty in estimates of duration times for individual activities.
Phase Review Process
A staged product development process in which first one function completes a set of tasks, then passes the information they generated sequentially to another function which in turn completes the next set of tasks and then passes everything along to the next function. Multifunctional teamwork is largely absent in these types of product development processes, which may also be called baton-passing processes. Most firms have moved from these processes to Stage-GateÔ processes using multifunctional teams.
Physical Elements
The components that make up a product. These can be both components (or individual parts) in addition to minor subassemblies of components.
Pilot Gate Meeting
A trial, informal gate meeting usually held at the launch of a Stage-Gate™ process to test the design of the process and familiarize participants with the Stage-Gate™ process.
Pipeline (product pipeline)
The scheduled stream of products in development for release to the market.
Pipeline Alignment
The balancing of project demand with resource supply. (See Chapter 5 in The PDMA HandBook 1st Edition and Chapter 3 in The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition.)
Pipeline Inventory
Production of a new product that has not yet been sold to end consumers, but which exists within the distribution chain.
Pipeline Loading
The volume and time phasing of new products in various stages of development within an organization.
Pipeline Management
A process that integrates product strategy, project management, and functional management to continually optimize the cross-project management of all development-related activities. (See Chapter 5 in The PDMA HandBook 1st Edition and Chapter 3 in The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition.)
Pipeline Management Enabling Tools
The decision-assistance and data-handling tools that aid managing the pipeline. The decision-assistance tools allow the pipeline team to systematically perform trade-offs without losing sight of priorities. The data-handling tools deal with the vast amount of information needed to analyze project priorities, understand resource and skillset loads, and perform pipeline analysis.
Pipeline Management Process
Consists of three elements; pipeline management teams, a structured methodology and enabling tools.
Pipeline Management Teams
The teams of people at the strategic, project and functional levels responsible for resolving pipeline issues.
Platform Product
The design and components that are shared by a set of products in a product family. From this platform, numerous derivative products can be designed. (See also product platform)
Platform Roadmap
A graphical representation of the current and planned evolution of products developed by the organization, showing the relationship between the architecture and features of different generations of products.
Porter’s Five Forces
Analysis framework developed by Michael Porter in which a company is evaluated based on its capabilities versus competitors, suppliers, customers, barriers to entry, and the threat of substitutes. (See Porter, Michael. 1998. Competitive Strategy. The Free Press)
Portfolio
Commonly referred to as a set of projects or products that a company is investing in and making strategic trade-offs against. (See also project portfolio and product portfolio)
Portfolio Criteria
The set of criteria against which the business judges both proposed and currently active product development projects to create a balanced and diverse mix of ongoing efforts.
Portfolio Management
A business process by which a business unit decides on the mix of active projects, staffing and dollar budget allocated to each project currently being undertaken. See also pipeline management. (See Chapter 13 of The PDMA ToolBook 1 and Chapter 3 of The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition.)
PM is a decision-making process, utilized in conjunction with the NPD process to help senior management strategically align and prioritize projects to add the most value to the firm while optimizing scare resources (people, time, money and equipment)
Portfolio Map
A chart or graph which graphically displays the relative scalar strength and weakness of a portfolio of products, or competitors in two orthogonal dimensions of customer value or other parameters. Typical portfolio maps include “Price vs. performance”, Newness to company vs. newness to market; Risk vs. return.
Portfolio Rollout Scenarios
hypothetical illustrations of the number and magnitude of new products that would need to be launched over a certain time frame to reach the desired financial goals; accounts for success/failure rates and considers company and competitive benchmarks.
Portfolio Team
a short-term, cross-functional, high-powered team focused on shaping the concepts and business cases for a portfolio of new product concepts within a market, category, brand or business to be launched over a 2-5 year time period, depending on the pace of the industry.
Pre-Production Unit
A product that looks like and acts like the intended final product, but is made either by hand or in pilot facilities rather than by the final production process.
Preliminary Bill of Materials (PBOM)
A forecasted listing of all the subassemblies, intermediate parts, raw materials, and engineering design, tool design, and customer inputs that are expected to go into a parent assembly showing the quantity of each required to make an assembly.
Process Champion
The person responsible for the daily promotion of and encouragement to use a formal business process throughout the organization. They are also responsible for the ongoing training, innovation input and continuous improvement of the process.
He or she pushes the NPD process as a vehicle for product, service, and Program Innovation.
Visible, Trusted, Respected, Admired
Process Managers
The operational managers responsible for ensuring the orderly and timely flow of ideas and projects through the process.
The keeper of the NPD process. He or she is the process expert with responsibility to promote and improve the NPD processes. The process manager will instruct NPD teams on process subtleties and guidelines as well as defending the NPD process through proper evaluation of metrics.
Promoter, Improver, Defender, Teacher
Process Map
A workflow diagram that uses an x-axis for process time and a y-axis that shows participants and tasks.
Process Mapping
The act of identifying and defining all of the steps, participants, inputs, outputs, and decisions associated with completing any particular process.
Process Maturity Level
The amount of movement of a reengineered process from the “as-is” map, which describes how the process operated initially, to the “should-be” map of the desired future state of the operation.
Process Owner
The executive manager responsible for the strategic results of the NPD process. This includes process throughput, quality of output, and participation within the organization. (See Section 3 of The PDMA ToolBook for 4 tools that process owners might find useful, and see Chapter 5 of The PDMA HandBook.)
Process Re-engineering
A discipline to measure and modify organizational effectiveness by documenting, analyzing, and comparing an existing process to “best-in-class” practice, and then implementing significant process improvements or installing a whole new process.
Product
Term used to describe all goods, services, and knowledge sold. Products are bundles of attributes (features, functions, benefits, and uses) and can be either tangible, as in the case of physical goods, or intangible, as in the case of those associated with service benefits, or can be a combination of the two.
Product and Process Performance Success
The extent to which a new product meets its technical performance and product development process performance criteria.
Product Approval Committee (PAC)
The group of managers who serve as advisors, decision-makers and investors in a Stage-Gate™ process: a company’s NPD executive committee. Using established business criteria, this multifunctional group reviews new product opportunities and project progress, and allocates resources accordingly at each gate. (See Chapter 7 of The PDMA ToolBook 1 and Chapters 21 and 22 of The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition).
Product Architecture
The way in which the functional elements are assigned to the physical chunks of a product and the way in which those physical chunks interact to perform the overall function of the product. (See Chapter 16 of The PDMA HandBook 1st Edition.)
Project Decision Making & Reviews
A series of Go/No-Go decisions about the viability of a project that ensure the completion of the project provides a product that meets the marketing and financial objectives of the company. This includes a systematic review of the viability of a project as it moves through the various phase stage gates in the development process. These periodic checks validate that the project is still close enough to the original plan to deliver against the business case (See Chapters 21 and 22 of The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition).
Product Definition
Defines the product, including the target market, product concept, benefits to be delivered, positioning strategy, price point, and even product requirements and design specifications
Product Development
The overall process of strategy, organization, concept generation, product and marketing plan creation and evaluation, and commercialization of a new product. (See Chapters 19 - 22 of The PDMA HandBook 1st Edition.)
Product Development & Management Association (PDMA)
A not-for-profit professional organization whose purpose is to seek out, develop, organize and disseminate leading edge information on the theory and practice of product development and product development processes. The PDMA uses local, national, and international meetings and conferences, educational workshops, a quarterly magazine (Visions), a bi-monthly scholarly journal (Journal of Product Innovation Management), research proposal and dissertation proposal competitions, The PDMA HandBook of New Product Development 1st and 2nd Editions, and The PDMA ToolBook 1 for New Product Development to achieve its purposes. The association also manages the certification process for New Product Development Professionals. Web site: www.pdma.org.
Product Development Check List
A pre-determined list of activities and disciplines responsible for completing those activities used as a guideline to ensure that all the tasks of product development are considered prior to commercialization. (See Ray Riek, JPIM, 2001)
Product Development Engine
The systematic set of corporate competencies, principles, processes, practices, tools, methods and skills which combine to define the “how” of an organization’s ability to drive high value products to the market in a competitive timely manner.
Product Development Portfolio
The collection of new product concepts and projects that are within the firm’s ability to develop, are most attractive to the firmís customers and deliver short- and long-term corporate objectives, spreading risk and diversifying investments. (See Chapter 13 in The PDMA ToolBook 1 and Chapter 3 of Chapters 21 and 22 of The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition.)
Product Development Process
A disciplined and defined set of tasks, steps, and phases that describe the normal means by which a company repetitively converts embryonic ideas into salable products or services. (See Chapters 4 and 5 of The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition.)
Product Development Strategy
The strategy that guides the product innovation program.
Product Development Team
A multifunctional group of individuals chartered to plan and execute a new product development project.
Product Discontinuation
A product or service that is withdrawn or removed from the market because it no longer provides an economic, strategic, or competitive advantage in the firmís portfolio of offerings. (See Chapter 28 of The PDMA HandBook 1st Edition.)
Product Discontinuation Timeline
The process and timeframe in which a product is carefully withdrawn from the marketplace. The product may be discontinued immediately after the decision is made, or it may take a year or more to implement the discontinuation timeline, depending on the nature and conditions of the market and product.
Product Failure
A product development project that does not meet the objective of its charter or marketplace.
Product Family
The set of products that have been derived from a common product platform. Members of a product family normally have many common parts and assemblies.
Product Innovation Charter (PIC)
A critical strategic document, the Product Innovation Charter (PIC) is the heart of any organized effort to commercialize a new product. It contains the reasons the project has been started, the goals, objectives, guidelines, and boundaries of the project. It is the “who, what, where, when, and why” of the product development project. In the Discovery phase, the charter may contain assumptions about market preferences, customer needs, and sales and profit potential. As the project enters the Development phase, these assumptions are challenged through prototype development and in-market testing. While business needs and market conditions can and will change as the project progresses, one must resist the strong tendency for projects to wander off as the development work takes place. The PIC must be constantly referenced during the Development phase to make sure it is still valid, that the project is still within the defined arena, and that the opportunity envisioned in the Discovery phase still exists.
Value of team’s work is highlighted in the PIC
Product Interfaces
Internal and external interfaces impacting the product development effort, including the nature of the interface, action required, and timing.
Product Life Cycle
The four stages that a new product is thought to go through from birth to death: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Controversy surrounds whether products go through this cycle in any predictable way.
Product Life-Cycle Management
Changing the features and benefits of the product, elements of the marketing mix, and manufacturing operations over time to maximize the profits obtainable from the product over its lifecycle. (See Chapter 33 of The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition).
Product Line
A group of products marketed by an organization to one general market. The products have some characteristics, customers, and uses in common and may also share technologies, distribution channels, prices, services, and other elements of the marketing mix.
Product Management
Ensuring over time that a product or service profitably meets the needs of customers by continually monitoring and modifying the elements of the marketing mix, including: the product and its features, the communications strategy, distribution channels and price.
Product Manager
The person assigned responsibility for overseeing all of the various activities that concern a particular product. Sometimes called a brand manager in consumer packaged goods firms.
Product Plan
Detailed summary of all the key elements involved in a new product development effort such as product description, schedule, resources, financial estimations and interface management plan.
Product Platforms
Underlying structures or basic architectures that are common across a group of products or that will be the basis of a series of products commercialized over a number of years.
Set of subsystems and interfaces forming a common structure. It leads to continuous stream of derivative products
Product Portfolio
The set of products and product lines the firm has placed in the market. (See Chapter 13 of The PDMA ToolBook 1.)
Product Positioning
how a product will be marketed to customers. The product positioning refers to the set of features and value that is valued by (and therefore defined by) the target customer audience, relative to competing products.
Product Rejuvenation
The process by which a mature or declining product is altered, updated, repackaged or redesigned to lengthen the product life cycle and in turn extend sales demand.
Product Requirements Document
The contract between, at a minimum, marketing and development, describing completely and unambiguously the necessary attributes (functional performance requirements) of the product to be developed, as well as information about how achievement of the attributes will be verified (i.e. through testing).
Product Superiority
Differentiation of a firm’s products from those of competitors, achieved by providing consumers with greater benefits and value. This is one of the critical success factors in commercializing new products.
Program Manager
The organizational leader charged with responsibility of executing a portfolio of NPD projects. (See Section 4 of The PDMA ToolBook 1 for 4 product development tools a program manager may find helpful.)
Project Leader
The person responsible for managing an individual new product development project through to completion. He or she is responsible for ensuring that milestones and deliverables are achieved and that resources are utilized effectively. See also Team Leader. (See Sections 1 and 2 of The PDMA ToolBook 1 for 8 product development tools for project leaders)
Project Management
The set of people, tools, techniques, and processes used to define the projectís goal, plan all the work necessary to reach that goal, lead the project and support teams, monitor progress, and ensure that the project is completed in a satisfactory way.
Project Pipeline Management
Fine-tuning resource deployment smoothly for projects during ramp-up, ramp-down, and mid-course adjustments.
Project Plan
A formal, approved document used to guide both project execution and control. Documents planning assumptions and decisions, facilitates communication among stakeholders, and documents approved scope, cost,m and schedule deadlines.
Project Portfolio
The set of projects in development at any point in time. These will vary in the extent of newness or innovativeness. (See Chapter 13 in The PDMA ToolBook 1 and Chapter 3 of The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition.)
Project Resource Estimation
This activity provides one of the major contributions to the project cost calculation. Turning functional requirements into a realistic cost estimate is a key factor in the success of a product delivering against the business plan.
Project Sponsor
The authorization and funding source of the project. The person who defines the project goals and to whom the final results are presented. Typically a senior manager.
Project Strategy
The goals and objectives for an individual product development project. It includes how that project fits into the firm’s product portfolio, who the target market is, and what problems the product will solve for those customers. (See Chapter 2 in The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition.)
Project Team
A multifunctional group of individuals chartered to plan and execute a new product development project.
Prospectors
Firms that lead in technology, product and market development and commercialization, even though an individual product may not lead to profits. Their general goal is to be first to market with any particular innovation.
Protocol
A statement of the attributes (mainly benefits; features only when required) that a new product is expected to have. A protocol is prepared prior to assigning the project to the technical development team. The benefits statement is agreed to by all parties involved in the project.
Prototype
A physical model of the new product concept. Depending upon the purpose, prototypes may be non-working, functionally working, or both functionally and aesthetically complete.
Psychographics
Characteristics of consumers that, rather than being purely demographic, measure their attitudes, interests, opinions, and lifestyles.
Pull-Through
The revenue created when a new product or service positively impacts the sales of other, existing products or services (the obverse of cannibalization).
Product Planning
Process of envisioning, conceptualizing, developing, producing, testing, commercializing, sustaining and disposing of organizational offerings to satisfy consumer needs/wants and achieve organizational objectives
Product Proliferation
Current trend of companies to expand the width and depth of their mixes
Product Platform Strategy
A top-down approach to maximize market leverage from common technologies/technology building blocks.
Utilizes both horizontal and vertical market leveraging with efficient R&D and manufacturing capabilities
Portfolio Management Tools
A computer program, spanning from a single spreadsheet to a full-featured and integrated software suite that allows the entire new or active product portfolio to be viewed and analyzed according to selected key variables. PM tools generally include idea pipeline and product lifecycle management. Software tools may include team member notification, scheduling, budget control, and knowledge management modules
Platform
Underlying structures or basic architectures that are common across a group of products or that will be the basis of a series of products commercialized over a number of years
Platform Projects
(1) Basis of product family
(2) Modest enhancement in features
(3) Extend the product line
Product Protocol
An agreement of what needs to be done to the work; Completed prior to the development phase; Communicates essentials to all players, leading to the integrated actions, providing targets and direction for outcomes; Defines the length of the process or cycle statements; Defines requirements in terms that can be measured; Guideline for designers, developers, others
Product Use testing
Testing the end-user’s experience of the new product or service
Process Sponsor
Typically pulled from the ranks of Divisional or Departmental Managers. He/she delivers resources (time, money, people, and/or equipment) to the NPD projects and probably participates in the NPD process as a gatekeeper or Project Development Manager.
Progressive Elaboration
Technique in Project Management that identifies continuous improvements and details of plans as the project progresses.
Based on theory that planing some future deliverables requires information from previous projects and from outputs of other plans. It is the critical assumption for successive implementation of the NPD process
Post-Launch Review
It instills accountability for results and fosters a culture of continuous improvement. The ability to sustain significant improvements in development over long periods of time rests on the capability to learn from experience.
Primary Market Research
Primary market research is information that comes directly from potential customers.
Controls all elements of primary market research (Tailored to specific company needs). Uses qualitative and quantitative methods. Techniques include surveys/questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, Internal sources
Pseudo sale market testing
Involves artificial selling situations that are akin to role-playing or hypothetical selling situations. Thus the actual product is not available for sales.
