In the landmark HBR article The Four Things a Service Business Must Get Right, by Frances X. Frei, the author contrasts a product business from a service business. The author opines that in a service business, unlike products businesses, the customer is a key part of the product realization processes. His research leads him to… Read More
I got a call from an engineering friend of mine. He just moved to a new city for a new job. He writes firmware for a small company. Reason for the call? He is bored and wondered if we had any projects he could work on. Good engineers love their jobs and hate just sitting… Read More
The prototype is all done and it seems to work well. Now, how do you get the prototype manufactured reliably and at a reasonable cost? If you’re like a lot of small companies, this is not something you do all the time. Finish Line PDS has done more than 1,500 projects for more than 300… Read More
“The future ain’t what it used to be.” Yogi Berra Sometimes product development projects do not live up to their initial promise. Knowing when to shut down a project can be an essential ingredient to success. Most new product ideas start with high expectations, but over time, some start to fade. Worse, this process often… Read More
We often get calls asking if we can design a prototype, or have we ever worked with the X Y Z technology? After a few probing questions, what we learn is that this company needs a product developed, not a prototype designed—at least not yet. Developing a product is different than designing a product or… Read More
Does it ever seem like the last 10% of the project takes 90% of the time? If you have had this experience, you are not alone. It happens all too frequently when trying to develop technology products in a small company. Managing a project with several different engineers, all with their unique areas of expertise,… Read More
Small companies do not have significant sales volumes to offset development cost. They must keep product development budgets reasonable, without sacrificing quality. However, they often have smaller and inefficient teams. They also have less than complete processes and long product life cycles. What should a small company do? Here are the top 3 methods for… Read More
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any direction will do.” Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland We are often brought in to help with troubled product development projects that are not progressing as expected. You might expect that the reason for the lack of success would be because of the team’s poor technical skills and… Read More
A Requirements Document (RD) is the first step to creating a great product. Because it is the first step, an RD has the greatest leverage of all product development activities. A small error in the direction at this stage can make a big difference in where the product ultimately ends up. Good is the enemy… Read More
Sometimes it is just as important to know what not to do as it is to know what to do. Ignoring product development will result in your business going away. This may seem like an obvious statement, but it happens much more often to small companies than it should, and let me try to explain… Read More