The process of new product development is as varied as there are people who do it. The process can be a single engineer with an idea, developing a product with little input from anyone else. It can also be as complicated as the thousands of people involved in the development of the Saturn V rocket and the eventual manned space missions to the moon.  We assume your product is somewhere in between. 

The development process at imagic has been honed and is continuously monitored and  improved. We break the process down into phases: invention, design, implementation, initial release and ongoing support.  What follows is an explanation of each stages and what you may expect from each of them. As a note the phases tend to chronologically overlap, for instance  invention will continue into the design phase as the reality of the technically possible modifies the scope of our original intention or desire.

Invention

Design

Implementation

Release

Support

 

Invention

The process of developing a new product begins with you. It's your marketplace and idea that is the genesis of all that follows. We strive to work with you in order to define and refine the specifics of your idea. We will help you develop a set of product requirements. What will it do, what will it look like, how much will it cost, and is this possible? We ask a lot of questions and have come up with a checklist that you might like to use.

Brainstorming sessions,  writing, and thinking followed eventually by agreement and buy in are the expected result. This result is embodied in a written requirements definition. This document which may be fairly simple or hundreds of pages contains what we all agree will be the product.  This understanding and document is a living guide to the project.  At this point a preliminary cost estimate can be offered. This estimate is often wildly off target and not often in the negative direction.

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Design

The design phase involves attaching the requirements to specific technologies that will be used to implement the product. It is here that the art of the possible, probable and highly likely are investigated, debated and defined. We attach costs and risks, figure out how we are going to do what we have set out to do and often return to the invention phase because we've set our sights to high or to low. During this phase a complete written design specification is generated. This document outlines the following:

1. the exact technical specifications of the product
2. the individual tasks required to generate the design
3. the methods to be employed to implement the design
4. a detailed schedule with milestones
5. a budget (What all this going to cost)
6. a review process (do we all agree )

The success of a project is intimately linked to the quality and adherence to the above steps. This is especially true of any project longer than a couple of weeks,  involving more than one person.

It is in this phase, working with the customer, that the technical product requirements take shape. As an example of the detailed nature of this phase, all  individual tasks are broken down so none of them is  scheduled to take longer than 3 man days. In a project of a man year there will be at least 84 different tasks.

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This is where the actual design is crafted. For this Phase to go correctly, we need to have set up well defined milestones in the design phase. When we believe we have arrived at a milestone we need to thoroughly evaluate:

1. the product design
2. the progress of development
3. have we met the goal on time, on budget
4. what alterations to the specification need to be made
5. what adjustments to the schedule need to be made

A formal review, first internally, then with the client occurs at each milestone. A formal sign off procedure, with alterations to the design proposal, that all parties agree to, also occurs. This way there are no last minute misunderstandings or surprises.

While this is not the easiest route to take, forcing us and our customers to formally evaluate the design at regular intervals in a formal, set, manner will ultimately lead to a better, cheaper product development cycle. 

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Initial Release Phase

During this phase of the project the final testing and debug of the initial product release occurs. This typically results in an alpha followed by a beta release of the product.

A full regression test without critical, major or minor issues must be accomplished in order to signal completion of this phase. 

It is during this phase and certainly in the prior two phases that designers work with purchasing, manufacturing, test and support team members to assure a graceful launch of the product.

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Support

On going support continues through the life of the product. Bugs and enhancements are documented and analyzed. Improvements and fixes are released periodically. 

This is the phase of a project that is most often excluded from the planning process.   A software product that costs $300,000 dollars to get to an initial release is of significant complexity and will require considerable support and modification as a wide variety of users get a chance to evaluate and use the product.  Changes are also often the result of our changing technology landscape. Operating systems come and go, computer motherboards and peripherals also have a lifespan of only months. Additionally, even after the most rigorous testing programs, there are always bugs that only show up once the product is in the field and is being used in a way no one anticipated.

Another issue often not taken into consideration is the amount of testing   required for successive upgrades and release cycles. A product that has taken several man years to construct requires complete successful regression testing at each release. This can be a process of weeks and months to achieve success depending on the complexity of the changes undertaken.

Making ongoing support a part of the plan from the beginning will lead to a successful technology offering and a  careful understanding of the ongoing costs associated with any technology development project.

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Material Copyright © 1999 imagic, inc. modified Aug 2001