Product Development
Baseline Assessment
Assessing the current state as the starting point for process improvement is the primary objective of a product development baseline assessment.
The 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 product development process, which represents the starting point, or baseline, for initiating improvement. However, the baseline assessment embodies additional elements as part of the overall activity.
Specifically, the Product Development Baseline Assessment consists of the following elements:
- Identify current problems and issues in the product development process
- Define product development strategies and create a vision of the future state
- Develop an operational implementation plan focused on selected, key areas for improvement with identified deliverables
- Obtain management commitment to proceed with the plan
Typically, a baseline assessment takes one to three days to complete. The structure for conducting an assessment can take on different forms and is influenced by a number of factors including the size and complexity of the organization, availability of data to support the analysis, and the level of organizational knowledge of issues associated with the current process. However, regardless of the format used, there are some basic steps that should be taken before an actual assessment begins to ensure success:
- Ensure the business unit or department will support the baseline assessment
- Select individuals for the baseline core team
- Include management input in selecting dates for conducting the assessment
- Identify and collect required data prior the assessment
- Distribute surveys (if required)
- Communicate with the management team
- Prepare the baseline core team
The baseline assessment is a logical first step on the path towards product development excellence. Consequently, as the starting point, it represents one of the Launch Elements of the APD System.
With proper planning, baseline events can be extremely efficient, focused events, that quickly get to the fundamental product development issues.
For example, as a result of conducting numerous baseline assessments, issues related to workload management, requirements flowdown, knowledge capture, and operations integration have proven to be common and pervasive across virtually every industry. Armed with this information, companies can develop an improvement strategy focused on these and other identified areas of opportunity.
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