How do we help clients improve product development?
Major symptom diagnosis. Clear red flags can include unpredictable schedule delays, higher-than-expected product development costs, and/or a high engineering team attrition rate.
Root cause analysis. Once inside the organization, we can investigate failure factors such as the current work culture, whether espoused “values” match leadership and employee behaviors, leadership management style and its results, availability of resources and appropriate tools, quality of the concept development process, organizational structure and appropriate use of human resources, existing conflict management methods, effectiveness of reporting structures, and many more.
Tailored solution development. The key to assuring a successful development program, where development time and costs are controlled, is a team using a predictable process. Once the process is stable then the team can implement continuous improvement to further reduce development time and costs. To help companies achieve this, we apply a holistic approach that addresses all root cause factors, accounts for organizational constraints (culture, people, finances), and develops options for clients that directs the organization towards a range of positive product development outcomes.
Onsite implementation support. We will work on-site with team members if needed, to provide implementation support until teams can execute with full confidence.
Continuous improvement strategies. After our custom solution proposals are implemented, we can make recommendations for secondary areas of attention where improvement efforts can be focused. This can also be structured as an ongoing engagement where periodic reviews are held with product development teams to identify new emerging problems and advise on appropriate responses.
Ancillary services. As needed, additional services can fill a gap for companies that don’t have the appropriate expertise.
- Start-up company advisory services. To help establish an efficient product development process that positions the new organization for success.
- Engagement strategies for start-ups or smaller companies on working with large OEMs.
- Contract negotiation management (not legal documentation) for intellectual property acquisition or licensing, hiring custom design services to help achieve a final memorandum of understanding or master agreement. We can also help opposing legal and technical personnel achieve resolution of outstanding technical or business issues as quickly as possible so that engineering teams can focus on development and meeting the time-to-market timeframe. This service can also significantly reduce legal costs.
- Strategic sourcing strategy for complex custom components or design services. We help the engineering team work effectively to identify and select key partners and/or vendors.
- Strategic partner engagement management. We work with all parties to help make the relationship productive and position all parties for success. We develop a program management framework that will help achieve the goals of the engagement.