This area of PDC's practice is about figuring out what works and what doesn't so you can improve. Analyzing what you're currently doing and instituting metrics to evaluate the effects of new programs helps you get from Point A to Point B.
ASSESSMENT
What's getting in the way of your success? Is it excessively long time-to-market? Minuscule market share? Cost overruns? An ineffective product road map? Lack of group consensus? Or maybe you're not quite sure what the problem is.
Many companies think they understand their problems only to learn later that what seemed to be the issue is merely a symptom and the true difficulty lies deeper. PDC helps you get to the core of the problem with an assessment approach to identify improvements that yield exponential payback.
As a first step in conducting an assessment, PDC organizes collaborative steering teams consisting of senior managers from each of the key functions involved in product development. We also work with several product development teams to analyze facts and data derived from actual historical project experiences. We perform a language analysis with the teams to organize diverse observations and qualitative information into useful facts. With our help the steering team aggregates the historical project data, helping to identify and prioritize the key root causes within your organization and the related improvement activities that will have the most impact.
To fully understand the issues and how they affect your strategy and bottom line, we combine the project histories with a brief study of your strategic, management, and cultural environment. During this environmental assessment we gather information on the mission and goals of your division, the obstacles to achieving these goals, and the overall operating environment -- adding another layer of data to understand what influences product development and to uncover potential improvement initiatives.
To complement this internal view, we benchmark your product development capabilities against our database of best-in-class practices. Our approach not only yields a deep understanding of the issues, it also fosters consensus among representatives of critical business functions and helps you break out of old ways of doing things.
We combine the data and analysis gathered during the environmental, project history, and benchmark assessments to develop working plans that detail the improvement priorities and outline how to move forward with the recommended improvements.
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METRICS
Metrics make poor policemen -- numbers alone don't change behavior. Constructive action comes from the people involved, not from the numbers. And while almost every company attempts to measure its product development efforts in some way, very few are satisfied they are measuring the right things.
If your company suffers from
- measuring every little thing -- relevant or not;
- product development practitioners who find metrics burdensome, disconnected from their everyday work, or an infringement on what they view as an inherently creative craft; or
- the misguided idea that metrics can fix problems,
- then PDC can help you realize the full power of metrics, including fewer missteps along the product development timeline and earlier resolution of problems.
The goal of any metrics initiative should be to allow a capable product development or leadership team to make early, informed decisions. PDC's approach to helping clients develop metrics, based on years of practical experience, benchmark data, and best-in-class solutions helps you
- uncover the causal actions that influence your ability to achieve results;
- identify the vital few predictive metrics to measure how well you will achieve results;
- set up a system of governance for reviewing and managing your metrics; and,
- reduce reporting redundancy and information overload by developing a uniform metrics system across your enterprise and down through your organization.
Through a series of dynamic workshops, our consultants guide management and project leaders to
- set measurement goals;
- identify the critical people needed for rapid progress;
- set both results metrics (targets for improvement and motivating change) and predictive metrics (to manage change week-by-week);
- develop a system of governance for reviewing and managing metrics; and
- monitor the governance system.
From the smallest projects to enterprise-wide initiatives, PDC has helped companies simplify the process of measuring metrics and get at the critical few metrics that impact results.
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BENCHMARKING
How do your company's processes stack up against your competitors' or against best in class? Why do other companies attain faster time-to-market, a more efficient supply chain, or more effective integration of suppliers? PDC can uncover and illuminate these gaps so you can eliminate them.
Competitive analysis typically focuses on the features, functions, pricing, distribution channels, and other areas related to competitors' products and services. But what if you want to know how other companies perform a task? PDC's benchmarking practice can help you
- Learn how long it takes competitors to go from the inkling of an idea to product launch.
- Find out about competitors' phases/gates processes.
- Discover the processes competitors use to make their businesses soar.
To help clients understand how their processes stack up, we gather information that provides insight into the inner workings of other companies in a way that's personalized to your company's needs and allows you to focus on those areas relating directly to your bottom line. We work with you to:
- identify what companies or best practices you'd like to learn about;
- develop questions focusing on the key areas you want to analyze;
- strategize about how to best ask a question to retrieve often sensitive data;
- recruit multiple participants within a company so that answers represent a consensus of opinion; and
- analyze, probe, and follow up with respondents, either via telephone or on-site visits, to develop a solid analysis of approaches that compares your company's practices against a selected group.
At the end of the benchmark study, we provide you with an in-depth report detailing current information (not just information taken from a ready-to-go database) showing how your organization measures up in key process areas. For many companies, this is key first step in providing solid bottom line justification for improvements to your company's processes. It also provides insight into the vital few areas where improvement will yield the largest return on investment.
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SKILLS INVENTORY MANAGEMENT METHOD (SIMM)
Managing skills and intellectual capital effectively, up and down your organization, is critical to maintaining a competitive edge. New software and hardware initiatives, competitive pressures, and forced staff reductions are driving changes in how you manage employee skills and resources. The right processes and tools to inventory skills, plan training, and monitor development turn your resources into assets with staying power.
When it comes to product development, a little skills planning goes a long way. PDC's Skills Inventory Management Method (SIMM) can help you
- Ensure success with new processes and business initiatives.
- Reduce product launch delays.
- Reduce costs associated with unnecessary training.
- Enhance hiring plans.
- Minimize risk of employee turnover.
PDC offers a proven method to quickly identify and inventory the skills needed at all levels throughout your enterprise. We support both new and existing initiatives by providing easy-to-use tools for self-assessment and skills-gap analysis at the group and employee level. We also assist with group and individual training plans.
Our consultants have worked for years in product development organizations, managing people and planning resources to help meet objectives. We have structured a process that works in con your day-to-day activities and developed simple tools that require no formal training to use. And tapping into our experience and best practices database, our consultants can help you identify the appropriate hard and soft skills needed for a wide variety of positions, from purchasing for supply chain management to program leaders and executives.
A Skills Inventory effort includes:
- assessing the organization to identify job skills for specific areas;
- developing a skills matrix that covers general and specific skills;
- devising a rating system to determine how critical skills are to the position and function; and,
- implementing an easy-to-use automated tool for self-evaluation and skills-gap analysis and for monitoring development.
- The PDC approach provides a customized assessment of your organization and the skills needed. It combines the tools used to plan training and monitor skills development with a focused effort to zero in on the vital information you need to ensure your resources support your efforts.
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