Product engineering is not just a process of developing products, but it is a process of generating value, setting the pace of change, and sustaining relevance. To accomplish these goals, business requires a systematic plan. Silicon Signals, global leaders in product engineering services, outline six critical processes for enabling organisational transformation in product engineering. Here we also provide you with key findings that may complement your own trip, depending on what you’re looking for.
Stage 1: Assessing Core Capabilities
Any good product starts with a realistic assessment of the capabilities of the company that is implementing it.
Challenge: Does this existing base have the technical and strategic capability to perform in the chosen domain?
Solution: Conduct a comprehensive situation analysis to reveal these organizational gaps as strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for the organization.
Answer questions like:
- What is our service proposition or the equitable payoff for patrons?
- Is our current skill set and experience appropriate for the competition in this area?
- Chances are our branding process may also correspond to these new initiates; how so?
Virtual learning is an advantage because it takes into consideration the organization’s “future-readiness index.” Find out the degree of preparedness of your team and processes for future technological advancements such as artificial intelligence, IoT or blockchain etc. This means that if people prepare for change in advance, they won’t need to make expensive changes in future or when things go wrong.
Stage 2: Prototyping and Ideation
They are the crucial starting point of changing a mere idea into something more concrete. In this case, it is crucial to verify the product’s viability and obtain trust from stakeholders.
Challenge: How do you build upon a trivial ground breaking idea and define a practical product idea that can be marketed in the market?
Solution: Ensure you work with a PES provider to create prototypes that encapsulate your important features while at the same time collecting feedback for improvement.
Double check behind all of the interfaces before releasing a new version to the public, as they should all be well thought through. Role-play the test cases to identify potential issues while using the product and then create a product to fit the customers needs while testing all sorts of conditions.
Stage 3: Engagement Models: Selecting the Right Engagement Model
Engagement model selection sets the tone for business relationship between your business and your PES provider.
Challenge: In essence, how can flexibility together with control be attained whilst optimising resources?
Solution: Sample of engagement models that should be compared include:
- Time and Material: Best used where there are changing needs because the functional approach can easily be modified to accommodate change.
- Dedicated Teams: Suitable for those projects that are continuous in nature and may take a considerable amount of time to get completed.
- Fixed Cost: Best used where the project’s scope is well understood in advance.
- Hybrid Models: It is more or less an all-purpose product catering to multiple requirements.
Please make use of performance based targets in your engagement model. This makes it possible to justify performance and correct the plan according to its results without being prescriptive on time.
Stage 4: The use of Accelerators and Incubators
Business accelerators and incubators are particularly important when it comes to the development of innovations that must be brought to the market.
Challenge: That raises the question of how small or mid-sized enterprises can innovate without much capital to spare?
Solution: Apply accelerators for programs that need to move quickly or incubators for producing ongoing mentorship as well as developing an ecosystem.
Select the programs that have multi ecosystem participation. This gives you the opportunity of feeding relationships with other start-ups and other established businesses where you share information, resources and potential partners.
Stage 5: Full Service Offerings and DevOps
In order to achieve an optimization of product development, key aspects such as simplified processes and continuous delivery must be adhered to.
Challenge: In what ways can you achieve successful cooperation and faster cycle time?
Solution: Use DevOps to increase levels of efficiency by automating processes, encourage collaboration, and gain better and more uniform quality.
Adopt AI analytics into your Software Delivery Life Cycles. Prediction provides insights into the probable constraints, assessment on system efficiency and even recommendations on areas that need improvement to make the complete product development cycle more intelligent.
Stage 6: Support and Maintenance
But the majoring of a new brand is not the end of the life cycle of a product. Sustenance engineering helps maintain and keep production relevant by making some additional adjustments.
Challenge: This is usually the big question that many business owners are facing: How do I keep the customer loyal while at the same time innovating the product?
Solution: Spine it up with extra strong support systems and back it with timely updates along the lines of customer feedback and emerging trends.
Create a feedback intelligence map. In addition to collecting eNPS results, leverage AI to monitor channels of customer communication, social media platforms, and support tickets to identify trends and address/pre-sell new changes or improvements.
Bonus Stage: Co-Innovation towards Developing a Desired Culture
But you’ll want to add a seventh concept to these six stages: when possible, the whole approach should be focused on co-innovation with your PES partner to produce even more superior results.
Create conditions where your internal teams and PES suppliers collaborate, engage in mutual tasks, and have the same vision of further development.
Set out a clear framework of reference with the help of which your company’s goals and objectives sync with that of the PES provider.
Conclusion
The way to achieve good product engineering obviously requires a good plan supported by regular cooperation, creativity and flexibility. As with every stage of the program – from the identification of strengths to the use of accelerators, the choice of the engagement model, and the prioritization of customer insights – each step is highly important.
Not only will you be guaranteed technical know-how, but you will also receive strategic direction from Silicon Signals. It is time to think and create new possibilities for your products and therefore the future. So, thus, you should contact Silicon Signals today!
