Before we jump to the idea development phase itself, don’t miss our two previous blogs explaining why Research and Business assessment phases of new product development process are essential before the door to development is opened.
In the Development phase all the plans from previous phases are actually executed. Your cross-functional team is undertaking a set of parallel activities, which results in time compression without sacrificing quality.
This involves designing and development of the new product, planning the tests that need to be conducted and creating plans to launch the product into the market such as detailed marketing and operations plan. Financial analysis will be updated and the questions about legal, patent or copyright issues will be resolved.
Since the system stores all the data from the previous phases, they are always available for analysis, such as - what was the planned development cost of the new product in the business assessment phase and what is the actual cost in the development phase. Thanks to the structured and transparent innovation process on one hand, and deliverables from all phases in the other hand, your gatekeepers can make educated and fact-based decisions about the progress of the new innovation in each phase of the New Product Development. Typically, the gatekeepers include the senior management in the business unit or top management and executives in the company.
In order to minimize the risk of making the wrong decision there are several decision-making roles which can be involved in every review phase.
You can assign your Gatekeepers to have a different impact on decision making. If you mark your Gatekeeper as a Decision maker, you are giving him absolute power to push the innovation to the next phase. The Showstopper is the Gatekeeper who can stop the whole innovation in case there aren’t any Decision-makers as Gatekeepers.
If some of your Gatekeepers’ signature is required, by marking this field the idea development cannot move forward until the necessary signatures are provided.
When your gatekeepers make their decision about the progress of your innovation, your team will be facing extensive testing and evaluation in the next working phase- the Testing Validation and Verification phase.
