Product Development
Baseline Assessment
A Product Development Baseline Assessment is a rigorous, comprehensive analysis of a company’s product development process. This analysis enables the company to understand the current state of its process, which represents the starting point, or baseline, for initiating improvement.
A comprehensive assessment not only identifies the current state, but also addresses the go-forward plan. Consequently, a complete baseline assessment consists of the following elements:
- Identification of the current problems and issues in the product development process
- Evaluation of the performance of the existing process and the creation of the vision for the future state
- Development of an operational implementation plan focused on selected, key areas for improvement with identified deliverables
- Commitment from the management team to proceed with the plan
APD has extensive experience in conducting baseline studies that assist companies in identifying the fundamental issues that impact their product development processes. As a result of conducting numerous studies across many industries, APD has learned that there are some common issues regarding product development processes that are pervasive across many industries.
For example, one issue that many companies deal with is related to workload management. Workload management deals with the utilization of engineering resources in the most efficient way possible. Some key questions that would be asked in a baseline assessment to understand the scope of this problem in an organization include the following:
- Is there clear dissemination of the program/project priorities across all engineering resources?
- How is new work integrated in the product development pipeline of activities?
- Are engineers assigned and dealing with multiple projects at a time? Are issues related to multi-tasking prevalent in the organization?
- Are there work backlogs in the engineering departments? How are they managed?
Workload management may or may not be an issue in your organization. But, based on APD’s experience in conducting baselines, we would use workload management, along with four other key topic areas, as the starting point for conducting an assessment. This approach provides the benefit of making the assessment activity as efficient as possible, while quickly getting to the heart of the company’s problems.
The baseline assessment is a logical first step on the path towards product development excellence. Consequently, as the starting point, it represents the Launch Element of the APD System.
Armed with this information, companies can develop an improvement strategy focused on these and other identified areas of opportunity.
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