New Product Development (NPD) processes are about getting great products out the door and loved by the market.
NPD teams run into common problems:
Challenges with organizing both the ideation and the build-to-commercialization processes
Inability to combine stage-gate Waterfall activities with Agile methods (Hybrid) for prototyping
Problems with knowing progress with key stage-gate milestones at a glance
Traditional project tools don’t help solve the above problems. They don’t visually represent stage-gating NPD processes.
Pie helps and is made for NPD groups as the first visual stage-gate tool.
Pie’s patented “pie” model visually represents the stage-gate flows for ideation and the new product development to commercialization needs. This visual approach makes it super easy for team members to get quickly up to speed for either executing their standard procedures or implementing a Hybrid methodology that includes Agile iterations for prototyping and customer feedback loops. Directors and executives can monitor stage real-time progress at a glance.
Trusted by NPD teams.
NPD project needs.
Are the following points important for your needs?
NPD flexible best practices with knowledge for driving value
Processes that can repeat and scale
Phase gates with approval workflows
Product portfolio dashboards and resource forecasting
Constant improvement in real-time for better future projects
Pie is your lifeline platform for your new product development lifecycle. Any tool can check off what’s done, but they don’t always help you create and repeat success. Pie helps you craft your NPD steps to help you better build and deploy the most amazing value to your end customers.
Pie example for NPD.
Play the above video to see how Pie can be used for new product development implementation projects that includes researching, planning the concept, creating a prototype, building, validating, and launching. This video will also show how to use a process for managing ideation, which includes identifying new product ideas, reviewing for approval, and then prioritizing for implementation.
Fast-to-market value delivery.
Speed is one thing. Getting there fast is only half-way there. The important key here is “value”. What business value are you delivering fast to market? Pie is designed to help our customers reduce pain and increase team engagement. Less pain and happier people who understand how to build and deliver your products will quickly get you 100% of the way there.
Execute a well-defined new product development strategy that includes the how-to steps for all known processes. In Pie, these are your “Recipe” ingredients.
Improve consistency and predictability speed with repeatable Pie recipes that your teams improve over time.
Make better timeline decisions and understand time-to-market milestones with Pie progress reporting.
Reduce risk of delivery failure when teams collaborate and engage with the Pie Post features made specifically for identifying and solving issues and risks.
Leverage the Pie Ideas Post feature to highlight team members’ creative solutions to improve both the new product being developed and its NPD process.
Always improve your NPD processes and ensure they drive quality end results. This is done with updating your NPD Pie recipes.
Process — for the known.
A new product development process is a sequence of known steps that is typical with most NPD projects. This includes all of the planning, discovery, market analysis, design, etc. where each may require a phase gate for approval before moving to the next phase. Pie provides a visual phase gate process approach with Pie Slices and Pie Process Box features.
You can structure your NPD processes in Pie to drive your best practices and successful frameworks. This is first accomplished with setting up a Pie Recipe that you design to contain your known best practice content made from lessons learned.
Agile — for the unknown.
What about when your NPD projects are full of unknown work that may need to be done? This is common when developing a new product that needs a cycle of prototyping or maybe a type of new product that needs a unique change in how you execute the NPD project process.
This is when an agile approach is helpful. Agile for NPD is most useful as a hybrid by combining your known NPD methodologies with the unknown task work that needs to be discovered along the way.
You may have heard of “Agile” for iterative development. This includes the term “scrum” where a small team would identify, select, discuss, and develop a new set of targeted features (and defects). The term “sprint” is an iterative cycle of time (i.e., one or two weeks) for implementing scrums with end results that either presents new prototypes or delivers parts of your overall product.
We built Pie to allow you to combine process with agile. Use the Pie Board features for a section of your project that requires an Agile sprint/scrum process for the unknown work.
Hybrid — in the same project.
Combing the stage gates along with an agile board section will give you a true hybrid project approach. This brings the best of both worlds!
Again, it’s all about great results and the execution path may need a combination of different approaches. Pie gives you the flexibility for either the NPD phase gate method, agile iterative process, or the hybrid combo approach.