BA 290A-2 and ME290P
Fall 1998

Managing the New Product Development Process: Design Theory and Methodology

All assignments must be handed in at the end of the class session in which they are due. Note that these assignments are intended to pace the development process for your product. There is virtually no slack in this schedule and so assignments must be competed on or before the scheduled due date in order to maintain the project schedule. Because the design firms are contributing a significant number of what would otherwise be billable hours to coaching your development efforts, you should aim to make considerable progress on your projects between meetings with them so that they can make meaningful and useful inputs to your work.

All assignments except the project proposal are to be completed as a team. Please deliver all assignments according to the following format (which facilitates our making copies of them):
• Hand in one copy per group

• Use only one side of 8.5 by 11 paper. If you use larger paper originally, please provide an 8.5 by 11 reduction.

• Use a paper clip rather than a staple.

• Avoid covers, title pages and other superfluous materials.

• Be concise. We like assignments that are 2-5 pages in length when possible. The exception to this guideline is concept sketches where one concept per page is preferred.

• Please provide a short (less than one page) description of the process your group adopted in completing the assignment and reflection on its effectiveness. (However, please do not summarize the textbook if you adopt the exact method defined there.) You should also comment on any lessons learned related to team dynamics or project management.

Project Proposal and Selection: Friday, September 4th

We are all capable of generating ideas for new products, in part by noticing the deficiencies in the products we use in everyday life. To prove to yourself that you do have new product ideas, generate a list of at least 20 product opportunities. This list should include any idea that comes to your mind. Then create a list of criteria for choosing a project idea that can be developed during this class. (Some criteria are listed earlier in this section, but you may add others of specific relevance to you.) Based on these criteria, generate a list of ten product ideas that you think could be developed in this class. (Some or all of the ten may have appeared on your list of 20 ideas.) Those of you who wish to actually propose one of your ideas to the class will be allowed to do so during class time, and should prepare a proposal as described below.

ALL OF YOU should hand in your list of 20 ideas, criteria for selecting ideas for this class, and list of ten ideas. If you plan to propose a specific product idea to the class, prepare your one-page proposal per the instructions below and e-mail it to beckman@haas.berkeley.edu by 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 3^rd.

Proposals should include:

• A brief, descriptive project title (2-4 words)

• Your name, phone number, e-mail, and school/department affiliation

• A description of the market opportunity you have identified. Your description may include any of the following: Documentation of the market need, shortcomings of existing competitive products, and/or definition of the target market and its size.

• Please do not present any of your own product ideas at this point. Our strict focus in this phase of the course is on the market opportunity and not on solution concepts.

Come to class prepared to give a VERY SHORT presentation on your project. Your presentation should include:

• Your name and school/department affiliation

• A verbal or visual demonstration of the product opportunity you have described in your proposal. Given that the audience will be able to read your proposal at their leisure, you might spend your time explaining the richness of the market opportunity or demonstrating existing competitive products.

• Any special skills or assets you have (marketing expertise, access to a multimedia computer, user interface design expertise). Any special skills or assets you need to complement yours in developing this market opportunity.

By 5 p.m. on Saturday, September 5^th, you must decide on your project preferences. (You may do this during class and submit them by the end of the class session, or send e-mail to Sara at beckman@haas.berkeley.edu.) You should list the FOUR projects on which you would most like to work in order of preference. If you would like to work with a particular group of classmates, recalling that your group must contain engineering and MBA students, please list their names on your paper as well.

We will process your preferences and assign teams. You will be notified of team assignments by Monday, September 7^th. Once you have been notified of you team assignment, you should IMMEDIATELY launch your development process, developing a mission statement and commencing customer and user needs analysis.

Wednesday, September 23^rd

LAB -- Mission Statement and Customer/User Needs Assessment Plan

Prepare a Mission Statement (as shown on page 37 of chapter 3) and a plan for assessing customer and user needs for your product. Use this assignment to refine the definition of your project and to agree as a team about what your objectives are. We will review your work and guide you in any refinements that we believe will lead you to a better outcome at the end of the semester.

Hand in a mission statement as described in Chapter 3 and a brief plan for gathering customer and user needs. As with all project assignments, include a short discussion of the process you used, lessons learned, and any observations you have about your team.

October 7th and 9th

PRESENTATION -- Customer and User Needs

Gather raw data on customer needs (through whatever means you deem most appropriate to your potential market). Generate a list of customer needs for your product and organize it hierarchically into primary, secondary and tertiary needs. Identify three or four needs that you feel are important, but latent and not addressed by current products. You do not have to have the importance survey done by now, although you should do so soon if you envision hard trade-offs among different needs.

This will be the first of three presentations you will give on your product development project. (The other two will be in a tradeshow format.) Plan 10 minutes MAXIMUM for the presentation so that we can fit all projects into two class sessions. If you plan to use the in-class podium to give your presentation, make very sure that it works before you come to class, as we will not have time to spend trying to bring up your presentation materials.

Your presentation should cover the following: a mission statement, such as is shown on page 37 of your textbook, a brief review of the means used to collect customer and user needs information, a summary of the identified customer and user needs, and a brief summary of lessons learned in the process to date.

Come to class prepared to actively listen to your peers talk about their projects, ask them constructive questions and provide them feedback on the direction their projects are taking. This is your chance to get feedback from the class on your work, and for us to share lessons learned in the development process.

Hand in a softcopy of your slides -- e-mail it to both aagogino@euler and beckman@haas. In addition, hand in your hierarchical list of customer needs and the shorter list of important needs. If you have done an importance survey, hand in the results of that as well. As always, include a short discussion of the process you used, lessons learned, and any observations you have about your team.

Wednesday, October 18^th

Complete concept generation

Hand in sketches and bullet-point descriptions of the 10 product concepts you feel are most promising for your project. Please put each concept on a separate sheet with its accompanying description.

Wednesday, October 28th

LAB -- Concept Sketches and Descriptions

Perform your concept selection using the screening and/or scoring matrices. Bring your concept selection matrix and sketches of the three top concepts to lab for discussion. Identify the concept that you wish to pursue for prototyping and testing.

Hand in a sketch and short description of the concept you plan to pursue. Show the concept selection matrix (screening or scoring) and describe any concept testing that you used to make these choices. Include a simple description or sketch of each of the concept alternatives considered in your selection process. (You may hand in the same sketches from the last deliverable if the concepts have not changed since then, although some should be more refined than they were.) As always, include a short discussion of the process you used, lessons learned, and any observations you have about your team.

Friday, October 30^th

Concept Selection and Proof-of-Concept Prototype Tradeshow

Session objectives:

• Update your classmates as to progress on your product development effort.

• Make the first "public" presentation of your "proof-of-concept" prototype

• Gather feedback from classmates on your prototype

For this session:

1. Prepare a ONE-PAGE summary of your:
   • Mission statement

   • Target market

   • Salient customer needs

   Plan to present this one page summary briefly at the beginning of the class in 2-3 minutes. This will bring the entire class up to speed on your project before they review your work.

2. Prepare your "proof-of-concept" prototype. Come to class prepared to show it in a "tradeshow"" environment during which your fellow students will wander around the room reviewing your work. You are welcome to bring portable computers to set up your displays. You should plan to handle any arrangements for using computers on your own. We will assign locations in the room.

   In addition to your prototype, you should have the following materials available. (Each team will likely have done different versions of these. Use what you have already developed.)

   • Customer/user needs hierarchy

   • Mapping of customer needs to specifications

   • Concept sketches

   • Concept screening and scoring matrices

   • Reason for choosing the concept(s) you have developed for today

You should plan to have group members rotate responsibility for showing the prototype so that other group members can circulate. We should have about 50 minutes for this session. Think about the best way to efficiently and effectively collect feedback from your classmates. You may wish to have a

mini-survey available for them to complete. Remember that each student will only have about 5 minutes to spend reviewing your work, so make your presentation as succinct as possible.

You do not have to hand anything in for this session.

From this point forward, your focus will be on testing your product concept with your customer base, obtaining feedback, incorporating it into your product, and preparing the final product prototype. You will also perform a financial analysis of the product.

Friday, November 6^th

LAB -- Final Specifications and Prototype Planning:

The work you do for this lab will depend to some extent on the type of product you are developing. All teams should document the final specifications they intend to achieve and provide any documentation needed to support these decisions (as described in Chapter 4).

Those developing physical products should prepare assembly drawings of the product and a bill of materials indicating whether parts will be standard purchased parts or custom fabricated. An assembly drawing shows the overall product with each part in its "assembled" position. If it is clearer, you can use an "exploded" view instead. You will also want to prepare dimensioned sketches of each piece part and photocopies of vendor literature (e.g., catalog pages) for the standard purchased components. Indicate the material and process you have selected for each part, both for your prototype and for the final production version. The parts should be designed to be as close as possible to the intended final production version as possible.

Those developing software (web-based) products will prepare an overview of the modules contained in the product, the interfaces between them, and their primary functions. Indication should be made as to whether the module functions are available in existing software (e.g., database query software) or whether they will have to be custom designed. Specifications at this stage should be relatively clear -- such that a programmer could work from them to develop code.

Hand in the final specifications for the product, documentation supporting their choice, and "drawings" of your product. As always, include a short discussion of the process you used, lessons learned, and any observations you have about your team.

November 20^th

LAB -- Final Prototype Development, Testing and Refinement

This will be your last lab session before the final tradeshow. You will probably have built and tested several prototypes during the semester. The final prototype is primarily intended to communicate to an investor audience. Therefore, it must deliver two messages:

• The product has great customer appeal (i.e., Wow! That's a great concept!!)

• The product is technically feasible (i.e., Gee, it works!)

  In the ideal world, a single prototype can deliver both of these messages (i.e., the prototype both "looks like" and "works like" the real thing.) However, in some cases a development team can more feasibly deliver these messages with two or more separate prototypes.

Document the final specifications you intend to achieve. How will you evaluate how well your design meets the final specifications? Come prepared to review the results of testing your prototype with potential users, and to discuss plans for implementing their suggestions in your final prototype.

You do not need to hand anything in at this session.

November 25^th

DELIVERABLE -- Financial Analysis

Develop an economic analysis of your product following the guidelines provided in Chapter 11 of the book. Your work will likely be in spreadsheet form. This will allow us to give you feedback prior to your final presentation.

Some questions that may guide your thinking about the costs associated with your product: How many stages do you expect your distribution process to have? What is the target price of your product? What is its target cost? Those of you developing physical products should construct a bill of material for the product that you can cost. You should be able to prepare a simple cost/price model that relates the delivery (manufacturing) cost of your product to the price that the end user will pay given specific margins at each stage of the channel.

Hand in a financial model like that described in Chapter 11. Perform a sensitivity analysis of the key economic uncertainties you face. As always, include a short discussion of the process you used, lessons learned, and any observations you have about your team.

December 12^th

TRADESHOW -- Presentation of Final Prototype:

Prepare a tradeshow "booth" describing your final product. Your presentation should concentrate on the product itself, although you may wish to emphasize any particularly impressive portions of your development process. The presentation should be of the quality you would make to convince a top management group to purchase the rights to your product or to fund its final development and launch. An effective presentation includes a slide presentation along with a display of the prototype. (We will assess computer/power/etc. needs as the tradeshow date nears.) We will invite your coaches as well as other "outsiders" to attend the tradeshow and review your work. Please note that this event will be held in the Wells Fargo Room on the 5^th floor of Cheit Hall.

You must document your prototype(s) with 35 mm slides. Please turn in 2-3 high quality 35 mm slides of the prototype. These slides are both so that we can review the prototypes and so that we can maintain an archive of course projects. In addition, please submit:

• Hardcopy of your presentation slides

• Final financial analysis of the product (including, if applicable, the final bill of materials with cost estimates)