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Companies are measuring the wrong things and ending up with the wrong results. Many times we get stuck on measuring what’s easy instead of what’s useful. Predictive metrics are a solution.

Product development projects are not all the same. Some represent slight modifications of an existing, time-tested product, a workhorse for your company. Other projects might represent startling, new-

The Escalation Process clarifies the boundaries and channels of decision-making throughout an organization in order to solve the problem quickly and with clarity.

Our clients often ask us how they can become more innovative. Some seem to believe that innovation appears as if by magic. Many believe that there is no process for innovation. We have identified three innovation best practices that are research-verified, an end-to-end series of steps that yield the best ideas.

Agile is not just for software anymore. Many companies that develop tangible products – be they hardware or mixed software/hardware systems – are applying techniques, like the sprint scoreboard borrowed from Agile. By combining Agile with traditional processes, they are accelerating programs and delivering winning products.

Before projects become products, they are ideas in the minds of your teams. They begin as product concepts, germs of your company’s future growth. How can companies manage the portfolio of product ideas? They use an innovation strategic planning process.

Two of the most effective and beneficial of these practices are sprint demos. Powered by these twin aspects of Agile, development teams of all manner of products can increase accountability and make programs faster and more predictable.

Managers want to optimize their resources by loading them up and have them do more on the priority list to satisfy the executive suite and improve project efficiency. The optimum load is approximately 2 projects – one large and one small.

The Community Product Requirements Chart is a tool that provides customer insights and creates opportunities for innovation.

The Lite Schedule Estimating Matrix is a tool that helps to estimate the amount of time a project will take in any given phase. It leverages past experience combined with the critical few, key drivers that impact a project’s schedule.

Functional Silos lets the organizations to destroy Agile Implementation. When functional organizations do not support the transition to Agile, your implementation is defeated before it begins.

Preparation is key to a winning retrospective. The most important goals in most programs are time to market, a winning feature set, and quality. The best method is to collect the events that impacted these factors using a timeline.

The Predictive Metrics Tree is a tool that ensures that what you’re measuring helps you achieve your program goals. Learn to create Predictive Metrics Tree.

Setting “project boundaries and conditions” at the time of a project’s approval is an effective way to create a “contract” between the management and project teams.

Organizations are failing to take a stake in improving productivity in engineering, a core process that is the engine of top-line growth.

Dot Voting is a process in which a team can take a large amount of data and quickly gain focus on the most relevant elements based on the team’s shared analysis.

Companies are producing the wrong results, because they’re measuring the wrong things. If you want to ensure long–term success use short-term predictive metrics to quickly inform you that you’re on the right path.

At the beginning of any major project or program, defining a clear escalation path and protocols for problems will greatly speed the project.

Learn about the new product development process at Apple including the major issues and four step approach to transform Apple’s new product process.

The fastest way to destroy an Agile implementation is to let functional silos get in the way. Unfortunately, it happens all the time. And it happens because many companies underestimate the organizational implications of a successful Agile implementation.

The rate of technology and market change today is staggering. Yet, too many companies lack a Portfolio Management process that enables them to respond effectively to such shifts in markets and in the labs.

In too many companies, the front end of development remains fuzzy. The same companies that will micro-manage IT, or spend time simplifying a portion of their manufacturing operations, show little interest in improving the early stage innovation activities that drive future growth.

Creating high-performance teams is a competitive advantage. Through high performance teams it is possible to quickly innovate and deliver winning products to market.

You can’t take the risk out of invention and no project is completely risk-free. But you can reduce the risk, even in the most innovative programs. How? By anticipating it. The Risk Management Matrix is an elegant way to anticipate, manage, and mitigate product development risks.

Inadequate staffing or unclear priorities can leave resource gaps that derail projects. Team Wheel helps identify resource gaps.

The Function Phase Matrix helps clarify cross-functional team objectives, roles and responsibilities. It tracks key deliverables across the phases of a project and identifies each function’s participation in each of these phases.

Get to know about the simple auto responses that you can use in your recruiting process to improve your reputation and brand.

So-called “Waterfall” or “Phase-Gate” product development methodologies often give management the illusion that they are under control of the project, while they are actually just meddling and slowing it down.

Keeping a group of people of different cultures and different time-zones coordinated and productive can be a monumental task. Here are seven tips that may help.

Sorting out who does what on a project is pretty basic. Clear tasks with clear responsibilities and deadlines is Project Management 101. But how many projects have you managed where it was unclear who was responsible for a deliverable until it turned into a mess? The Circle Dot Chart addresses this issue.

Project post mortems can be an excellent tool for learning from mistakes and implementing process and decision-making improvements.

The Staffing Ratio Matrix contains a summary of all the projects in a given function, charted against the key functions found on a cross-functional team.

The Improvement Forecaster consists of an equation, and a graphical plot of expected improvement over time. It uses estimated degrees of technical and organizational complexity, and based on prior programs, estimates a rate of improvement.

Pitch points for Teams that develop new products and are challenged to produce a high-quality, valuable solutions in as short a time as possible and within budget.

Agile methods can be implemented for hardware product development. Increase speed and predictability by employing agile for hardware development projects.

The Product Radar Chart offers a way to evaluate and communicate the myriad factors that go into product and portfolio decisions by graphing the key dimensions of a product or concept and comparing them to alternatives.

Most businesses today are looking to take advantage of innovation to drive revenue growth, but they lack methods to fund the R&D expense necessary to support expansion. Use this handy visualization tool to fund innovation programs.

A Platform Derivative Chart is a diagram that depicts a set of related products over time. This is the most powerful type of Product Roadmap that highlights relationships between derivatives.

The best way to estimate the probability of success is a combination of internal factors and an understanding of the competitive structure of the market environment. Triangulation provides the most reliable guidance with the least effort.

Innovation entails many kinds of risk: technical, market, or risks related to external events. Product developers can’t avoid it, but they can do more to mitigate risks.

Have you ever wondered how to create a great product vision? Let’s show you. Start with some examples to get your reference frame properly set. Then look at some of the formats that might work best for you.

Four times Apple tried and failed to adopt a consistent product development process. We established a target metric with the aim of seeding the changes within the organization so that they took root.

Product Development lessons learned from developing BOSE’s blockbusters products - BOSE’s Noise-Cancelling Headphones and the BOSE® Wave® Music System.

The Change Impact Matrix is a descriptive tool that details the scope of the changes that everyone involved in a project will face. The matrix is useful for presenting the project context to upper management when discussing the project status, schedule, and progress to plan.

The Technology Roadmaps ties technologies & product timetables together by indicating which core technologies will be mature enough to incorporate into a particular product release.

Many of our clients are using virtual communities to communicate and collaborate with outside partners. Managed communities enable you to share ideas and present the best proposals to the leadership team. Here’s a tool that helps select the best type of community for your needs.

The Risk Mind Map enables a team to create a comprehensive risk profile. It allows management to anticipate where risks might arise and to prepare to meet these challenges more effectively.

Four-Fields Process Map Originated in Japan, the Four-Fields Map is a graphical technique most commonly applied to cross-functional processes.

The Deliverable Hit Rate tool manages project cadence by monitoring the progress of completed tasks against a target over time.

A product roadmap is a graphical representation of a set of related products over time with at most a monthly granularity.

Product Management is often an understaffed, overworked function. And the impact on the organization is huge.

Benchmarking often fails just when you need it most. All the best benchmarking and best practices lead nowhere if they are not implemented.

We’ve all experienced those mind-numbing meetings – there are a lot of people in the room, and many issues to resolve – but at the end of the meeting, little has been accomplished – what a waste of time and energy! One of the biggest factors driving inefficient meetings is organizational politics.