Aspects of Technology Product Development - Term Paper Example

? Design & Technology October 23, The development of technology-based products requires a much more complex process that integrates both technical and management sides of a business. It is often three-fold: the product development per se, adherence to particular regulations and ISO requirements, and introducing it to the market to ensure its market success. The first phase involves planning and system scoping, identifying the technical requirements to match the market needs. Product development, during this stage, requires extensive research, analysis and design to be able to come up with a model to match the plan. In the article Twenty Key Elements of a Product Realization Process, much was said about designing for performance, reliability, performance and cost; value and concurrent engineering. More than two thirds of the whole process is reliant on the technical designing and development. This is where the success of the product and the whole marketing project relies on. Product development entails in itself an end-to-end process of system requirement evaluation, business analysis, design and user testing. Among the twenty key elements include systems perspective and design for assembly. In the course of design, it is also important to consider ease of production, such that knowledge transfer would be effortless and seamless. The success in design does not only pertain to the product’s usability, but also to the benefits it will entail the developers and manufacturers themselves. There are time and function-considerations from the manufacturer’s point of view. A striking balance between timeliness and functionality must be met for the team to say that they have reached their objectives. Designing for cost means creating products that are cost efficient, which in turn, will benefit the users as these may be passed on with relatively lower cost than those of the competition, but with a much higher functional value. There are seven stages of Product Development as enumerated in Venture Navigator (Venture Navigator 2012): the idea generation; idea screening; concept development and testing; business analysis, beta testing and market testing; technical implementation and commercialization. All seven stages are crucial to ensuring that the end product is of high value and will be a market success. Idea generation involves market research – identifying market needs and what products and functionalities which they perceive to have the capacity to meet those needs. This stage aims to find evidence and proof of need for the product to be designed. Market research also involves collating which related regulations should be considered and what the competitors have done to address issues from all angles. Idea screening is also equivalent to system scoping. Findings are verified and analyzed if they be translated to significant and relevant product features. Analyzing opportunities and translating them into technical specifications fall into this stage. As in the case of the HIPAA Compliant Electronic Medical Record Capture/ Management, it was found out that there is a need to create a product to support would care in hospitals all over the United States. From this premise, the proponents have come to a design to address the need. Concept development and testing is that stage whereby ideas and concepts are crafted into a tangible product which users and testers can navigate. Functionalities are texted and links to the three main portals are established. In this case, smart phone devices shall be tested on the basis of their capacity to interface with the database and gateway. End to end testing, from the data capturing up to data storage and access/ download should be tested. This is where system design and engineering, software programming and data hard coding comes in. Business analysis is that part that marries the technical functions and specifications with certain processes. Proponents have to ask at this point ‘will this work in an actual organizational setting?’What are the external factors to be considered? Moreover, relative to this, system capabilities must adhere to existing privacy policies given that the product is aimed at capturing personal details of a person – details that may be used against him if placed in the wrong hands. By business analysis, it means that the product must be evaluated not only by virtue of its usability and utility, but also its capacity to meet industry and state standards. A quality control team to serve as auditors will complete the product development cycle. User acceptance and production testing ensure that the system features are usable and productive. In the article Product Development Stages (Product Development Stages 2012), it says that “… if you do not take into consideration the necessity of making preliminary certification tests then you are at a higher risk of experiencing material losses later. At this stage we need to define the class of the device, the necessity of making preliminary certification tests, and prepare the test schedule. After the results of preliminary certification tests, we must protocol the results of measurements made and, if necessary, make changes in design documentation”. It emphasizes the importance of validating with the users themselves if the design is indeed useful, and from the business’ point of view, does it really equate to sales and market success? Process building is a mandatory activity to come up with a basis for planning and managing projects. Aside from system scoping, process scoping in one of the essential steps to validate if the functionalities that being developed truly serve its purpose. Process descriptions are not the basis for codifying and communicating certain organizational knowledge about objectives, activities and values. Many companies’ internal policies and external standards such as the ISO 9000 series do mandate process documentation as a backbone for implementation. Process building goes hand in hand with product development. In the course of business review, it must be seen from each perspective how the development affects both business and operations. Brand and marketing management answers for the business side of the project by ensuring profitability of the product that was developed. Product development, from the business’ point of view, involves creation of a value proposition that offers to satisfy the identified and perceived customer needs in new ways by performing a function, solving a problem, or creating an experience through the sale of a product and/or service. The value proposition may be targeted to a select set of customers whose needs are best met by the product or service. The marketing team ensures that the right communication tools are used, the right message delivered and the right market to be tapped in order support the business objectives. Point of sale materials and relationship marketing must also be utilized depending on the product proposition. In the case of the HIPAA Compliant Electronic Medical Record Capture/ Management, institutional sales and tactical marketing are needed to touch base with medium to large-scale hospitals that are the target market for the product. Technical Challenges Among the biggest challenges on the technical side of the product development process has been issues related to multiple application integration. In this case, a number of business systems that use different data architectures (Filemaker, Oracle, mySQL, MS Access) are utilized so that inter-application data exchange can be complex and difficult. Enabling interface among these systems is a specific challenge that programmers have to deal with. When designing programs, another challenge is the fact that product managers and developers are set to deal with different people with different needs and agendas, and the difficult part is how to satisfy each party’s requirement while at the same time reconciling conflicting specifications, trying to keep everybody on track, and also creating a flexible design that will be able to accommodate current needs as well as anticipated and unanticipated future needs (in the maintenance phase). When working with web applications, there are several areas for consideration: the set of limitations per platform, including but not limited to performance and available UI components; which particular browsers guarantee support for; interactivity with the client computer among others. Many enterprise business applications are actually continuously evolving, so to speak of a maintenance phase is underestimating the nature of ongoing development. Whether due to internally or externally motivated changes, hardware changes, changes in interfaces to other applications, etc., an enterprise business application must be designed to be adaptable to change. To address this challenge, it must be remembered that the more work done upfront in design, and the quality of this work, the easier the remaining stages will be. This is even more important for cost, since costs can easily escalate down the line when trying to fix problems that could have been prevented by better work up front. It is important to look at all the current enterprise web apps on hand and the ones that are being developed to ensure consistency in the set of inter-application communication capabilities. The key therefore to avoid such occurrences is a critical analysis of the whole project, but also being keen to possible revisions in the system specifications along the course of development. Factors to be considered in the decision-making include the team's skill set, the cost of the technology being developed, the available budget to be used in the development and roll out, existing hardware, scope of the project, timeframe provided, the requirement itself, and the long term goals of the system and company. Management Challenges Conveying the project objectives, product functionalities and general directives to the workforce is another challenge that must be addressed to ensure the project’s success. A common problem in majority of the organizations is the apparent imbalance between the management of business operations and the control of the product development process. The requirements are often conflicting between these two aspects, particularly when there are policies and regulations that the system and the business itself need to adhere to. To achieve a certain degree of harmony and to ensure project success, there has to be a balance between the two. One area where the manager’s experience is most valuable is in balancing testing and analysis. Many technical people are prone to analyze an issue profusely before building something and testing it. Just making a model seems like an unprofessional measure, but measures are often just what we are looking for as we try to shrink tasks. Others, who may lack the analytical skills or discipline, do the opposite. They build and test repeatedly before thinking much about what the underlying issues may be, so they waste time as much time in revolving risk. New products often fail because of unanticipated market shifts that result in missed opportunities and misused channels of distribution. Failures also occur because companies miscalculate their own technological strengths or the product's technological challenges. These potential problems often crop up in the latter stages and result in delays, redesigns, or poor quality products. Marketing and Branding Strategies The last major leg to complete the cycle is the marketing and branding part, an essential part because this is when the product is offered to the market, the main reason why it was developed to begin with. Marketing is when various channels are utilized with the goal to promote the project. Branding, on the other hand, is the strategy by which a persona is created to give the product a face and a name with the aim to create market recall. Marketing communications is perhaps the most vital tool to market the HIPAA Compliant Electronic Medical Record Capture/Management System. The target user being the hospitals, the marketing scheme should focus on the benefits and the functionalities in a language that could be well understood by non-technical persons. This product is highly technical and the training materials should be the same, but from a marketing perspective, the easiest way to sell the product is to make the common user appreciate its simplicity and usefulness. Reference List Product Development Stages. Innovation Promward Company. October 23, 2012 from http://www.promwad.com/workflow/promwad-workflow-product-development-stages.html Product Development Stages. Venture Navigator. October 23, 2013 from http://www.venturenavigator.co.uk/content/294 Read More