Eager to know what techniques are used in product development?

Here is a brief account.

The world of business is truly fascinating. Businesses provide livelihood to the majority of the human race. Even farmers also depend on businesses to sell their products and get inputs for farming.

However, to most of us, the world of business remains a mystery. In these series of blogs, we try to unravel the mysteries of business.

In this blog we will learn about 'Techniques of Product Development.

Name

Description

Brainstorming

Brainstorming or idea generation is the process of obtaining ideas for new products in a non-judgmental environment, and to derive themes for further analysis from customers, sales representatives, employees, distributors, company’s research and development department etc. Many ideas are generated about the new product/service and out of these ideas, some are implemented. This is an excellent way to foster creative thinking as ideas are not judged and many ideas can be generated in a short time. However, participants must agree to avoid debating / criticizing ideas during brainstorming.

Affinity diagram

Affinity diagrams cluster categories and subcategories of ideas that have an affinity to each other. Affinity diagrams are useful for generating common themes when faced with number of unorganized findings.

Six Thinking Hats

Six thinking hats is used to look at decisions from a number of different perspectives. Each of the six hats represents a particular perspective that is adopted in turn by each of the participants. This forces participants to move out of their habitual thinking style and helps them to get a more rounded view of a situation.

Each 'Thinking Hat' is a different style of thinking. These are:

• White Hat (Data / Logical)
• Red Hat (Intuition)
• Black Hat (Devil’s advocate)
• Yellow Hat (Optimist)
• Green Hat (Creative)
• Blue Hat (Process control)

User Story

User stories are a brief textual description, typically 1 or 2 sentences, of functionality that users need from a solution to meet a business objective. User story describes actor (who uses story), goal they are trying to accomplish, and any additional information to be critical to understanding scope of story.

Persona

Personas are fictional characters that depicts the way a typical user interacts with a product, service, site or brand. Creating personas will help you to understand the users’ needs, experiences, behaviors and goals.

Prototyping

Provides an early model of final result, widely used for product design. Details UI requirements and integrates them with other requirements such as use cases, scenarios, data, and business rules. Stakeholders often find prototyping to be a concrete means of identifying, describing and validating their interface needs. Prototypes can discover desired process flow and business rules. It allows early user interaction and feedback.
Throw-away prototypes are inexpensive to quickly uncover and confirm a variety of requirements.

Functional Decomposition

Functional decomposition breaks down a large aspect (processes, functional areas, deliverables, scope, or problems) into smaller aspects, as independent as possible, so that work can be assigned to different groups. This reduces complexity of analysis. Provides shared understanding of complex matters and helps in estimation.

Workshops

Requirements workshop,known as JAD (Joint application design) session, is a highly productive focused event attended by carefully selected key stakeholders, and SMEs for a short, intensive period (typically 1 or a few days). This technique will help in obtaining detailed requirements in a short time and is a great way for stakeholders to collaborate.

Document Analysis

Elicit Business analysis information, by examining materials describing business environment or organizational assets. Document analysis helps in understanding context of a business need or understanding how existing solutions are implemented. Based on Business analysis information being explored, purpose, scope and topics to be researched are determined.

Estimation

Estimation techniques are used for better understanding of possible range of costs and efforts associated with any change. Common types of estimation are Top-down, Bottom-up, Parametric, Rough order of magnitude (RoM) / Ball park, Rolling wave, Delphi etc.

Risk Analysis

Identify, analyze and evaluate uncertainties that could negatively affect value, develop and manage way of dealing with risks. Can be applied at multiple levels - strategic, tactical or operational.

Surveys and Questionnaires

Administers a set of written questions to stakeholders and SMEs. Survey can elicit information from many people, sometimes anonymously, in a relatively short period of time. Can collect information about customers, products, work practices and attitudes. Alternatively, respondents are provided with a series of statements and asked for their level of agreement.

Vendor Management

Assess ability of a potential vendor to meet commitments wrt delivery and consistent provision of a product or service. Ensure that supplier is financially secure, capable of maintaining specific staffing levels, committing appropriately skilled staff to support solution, etc. 

Steps for vendor assessment 

• Determine knowledge, and expertise to be transferred, and method of execution. Consider vendors to provide knowledge, and expertise not internally available. 
• Choose licensing and pricing models 
• Determine terms and conditions 
• Determine vendor reputation 
• Determine vendor stability 

Functional Decomposition

Functional decomposition breaks down any large aspect (processes, functional areas, deliverables, scope, or problems) into smaller aspects, as independent as possible, so that work can be assigned to different groups. This reduces complexity of analysis.

Define what to decompose, how to decompose, and how deeply to decompose. Decomposition can be applied to diverse subjects like: Level of functional decomposition defines where, why and when to stop decomposing.

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