Tathagat Varma

Tathagat Varma Session 3/12: 28-May-2010

  Early Civilization   15th-19th Century   20th Century   21st Century

  2570 BC Great pyramid of Giza completed. Some records remain of how the work was managed: e.g. there were managers of each of the four faces of the pyramid, responsible for their completion (subproject managers).

  208 BC The first major construction of the Great Wall of China.

  Christopher Wren (1632–1723) was a 17th century English designer, astronomer, geometer, mathematician-physicist and one of the greatest English architects in history. Wren designed 55 of 87 London churches after the Great fire of London in 1666, including St Paul's Cathedral in 1710, as well as many secular buildings of note.

  Thomas Telford (1757-1834) was a Scotish stonemason, architect and civil engineer and a noted road, bridge and canal builder, who for example managed the Ellesmere Canal and Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.

  Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859) was a British engineer best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, including the first with a propeller, and numerous important bridges and tunnels.

  1910s   The Gantt Chart developed by Henry Laurence Gantt (1861–1919)

  1950s   The Critical path method (CPM) invented   The US DoD used modern project management techniques in their Polaris project.[2]   1956 The American Association of Cost Engineers (now AACE International) formed   1958 The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) method invented

  1960s   1965 International Project Management Association (IPMA) established as International Management

Systems Association (IMSA)   1969 Project Management Institute (PMI) launched to promote project management profession

  1970s   1975 PROMPTII methodology created by Simpact Systems Ltd (source: PRINCE2 manual)   1975 The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Fred Brooks published

  1980s   1984 The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt published   1986 Scrum was named as a project management style in the article The New New Product Development

Game by Takeuchi and Nonaka   1987 First Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide published as a white paper by PMI   1989 PRINCE method derived from PROMPTII is published by the UK Government agency CCTA and

becomes the UK standard for all government information projects

  1990s   1996 PRINCE2 published by CCTA (now OGC) as a generic product management methodology for all UK

government projects.   1997 Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt published

  2001 AgileAlliance formed to promote "lightweight" software development projects

  2006 Total Cost Management Framework release by AACE

  The process of bringing a new product or service to market. There are two parallel paths involved in the NPD process: one involves the idea generation, product design and detail engineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis. Companies typically see new product development as the first stage in generating and commercializing new products within the overall strategic process of product life cycle management used to maintain or grow their market share.

  Following steps could be sequential, parallel, or even skipped, but mostly required:   Idea Generation   Idea Screening  Concept Development and Testing  Business Analysis  Beta Testing and Market Testing  Technical Implementation  Commercialization  New Product Pricing

  Idea Generation is often called the "fuzzy front end" of the NPD process   Ideas for new products can be obtained from basic

research using a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats), Market and consumer trends, company's R&D department, competitors, focus groups, employees, salespeople, corporate spies, trade shows, or Ethnographic discovery methods (searching for user patterns and habits) may also be used to get an insight into new product lines or product features.

  Idea Generation or Brainstorming of new product, service, or store concepts - idea generation techniques can begin when you have done your OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS to support your ideas in the Idea Screening Phase (shown in the next development step).

  Idea Screening   The object is to eliminate unsound concepts prior to

devoting resources to them.   The screeners should ask several questions:

o Will the customer in the target market benefit from the product?

o What is the size and growth forecasts of the market segment/target market?

o What is the current or expected competitive pressure for the product idea?

o What are the industry sales and market trends the product idea is based on?

o  Is it technically feasible to manufacture the product? o Will the product be profitable when manufactured and

delivered to the customer at the target price?

  Concept Development and Testing  Develop the marketing and engineering details o  Investigate intellectual property issues and search

patent data bases o Who is the target market and who is the decision maker

in the purchasing process? o What product features must the product incorporate? o What benefits will the product provide? o How will consumers react to the product? o How will the product be produced most cost

effectively? o Prove feasibility through virtual computer aided

rendering, and rapid prototyping o What will it cost to produce it?

  Business Analysis  Estimate likely selling price based upon competition

and customer feedback  Estimate sales volume based upon size of market

and such tools as the Fourt-Woodlock equation  Estimate profitability and breakeven point

  Beta Testing and Market Testing   Produce a physical prototype or mock-up  Test the product (and its packaging) in typical usage

situations  Conduct focus group customer interviews or

introduce at trade show  Make adjustments where necessary   Produce an initial run of the product and sell it in a

test market area to determine customer acceptance

  Technical Implementation   New program initiation   Finalize Quality management system   Resource estimation   Requirement publication   Publish technical communications such as data sheets   Engineering operations planning   Department scheduling   Supplier collaboration   Logistics plan   Resource plan publication   Program review and monitoring   Contingencies - what-if planning

  Commercialization (often considered post-NPD)  Launch the product   Produce and place advertisements and other

promotions   Fill the distribution pipeline with product  Critical path analysis is most useful at this stage

  New Product Pricing   Impact of new product on the entire product

portfolio  Value Analysis (internal & external)  Competition and alternative competitive

technologies  Differing value segments (price, value, and need)   Product Costs (fixed & variable)   Forecast of unit volumes, revenue, and profit

  Stage 1 Pure function is all that matters: If the one thing it does is the only option available, people will be happy with it.

  Stage 2 Feature Wars: The number of features matters because frequently the buyer doesn't understand what each feature actually means. Later in this phase, specific features do make a difference as people are looking for certain features to make their purchase decisions.

  Stage 3 Experience Wars: The experience and total cost of ownership matters most. Products with fewer -but better- features will trump the more feature-laden winners of Stage II.

  Stage 4 Commodities: The actual item becomes absorbed into a larger product mix. Individual features of the technology no longer matter, but become a price/performance issue for the integrator.

  Could be thought of as a series of ‘phases’ or ‘stages’ (PMBoK, 4/e):   Project Phases are divisions within a project where

extra control is needed to effectively manage the completion of a major deliverable.

  Project phases are typically completed sequentially but can overlap in some project situations.

 The phase structure allows a project to be segmented into logical subsets for ease of management, planning and control.

 The number of phases, the need for phases, and the degree of control applied depend on the size, complexity and potential impact of the project.

  Waterfall   V-model   W-model   Spiral   RUP   Scrum   XP   Kanban   Scrumban   …thankfully, the evolution continues

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  A serial lifecycle is one in which all the phases occur in order.   One phase has to finish before the next one starts. Many waterfall projects don’t require

that each phase finish before next one starts, but do require that if you’re in phase n, you have to complete phase n-2.

  An iterative lifecycle is one where you prototype pieces of the product.   You might prototype pieces of the architecture or pieces of features. You might even plan to

throw those pieces of the product away. In my experience, the more the project team counts on throwing away pieces of code, the more likely you are to keep them around! Either way, the key is that you try something to learn about how this code might work in the product.

  An incremental lifecycle is where you build chunks of the product, most often feature-by-feature.

  The iterative/incremental lifecycles use timeboxes, also known as iterations, to finish chunks of work.   The iterative part of this lifecycle is the revisiting of the product pieces. The incremental

part is the finishing of the pieces you commit to finishing in this timebox. If you’re building a banking application, you might finish, as in test and demo to the customer, a piece of functionality such as “withdraw fast cash money.” You might still have other withdrawal stories or requirements to finish in a future iteration. But “withdraw fast cash money” is done inside one timebox and you can show people it works.

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