NPD – New Product Development as part of the Project Portfolio – Thinking Portfolio

The accurate understanding and anticipation of emerging market needs and lucrative opportunities is the basis for successful New Product Development (NPD) in project portfolio. The project managers and senior leadership in an organization will consistently face challenges with regards to allocation of institutional resources for launching the right products each time. It is critical not to make a mistake when planning a product launch as it could have a devastating impact on the finances and other resources of the organization.

PPM and New Product Development

When an enterprise decides to launch a new product, it indicates its willingness to retain a good working process and also introduce innovation into the business. Any new initiative is dependent on the organization’s business strategies as well as product innovation approach.

Project Portfolio Management solutions can help equip an organization in streamlining the management of project portfolios and product portfolios with the best use of resources. In addition to this, PPM also helps in developing adequate focus on NPD or new product development.

Multiple surveys reveal that the best-performing organizations owe nearly half of their total sales as well as profits to new products.

Let’s start from the beginning, i.e. the stage of getting inputs for new product ideas. The ideas may come from multiple different sources that include both external and internal stakeholders. Simple tools like Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access© database may be sufficient too. The most critical thing is to capture and consider each and every idea. Both the senior management and the product manager need to showcase active participation while collecting and scanning through ideas in the context of the existing competitive environment.

PPM solutions are aimed at improving the rate of success for new products. How? They ensure that there is maintenance of a well-planned portfolio of innovative projects. In order to offer maximum value to the organization, a portfolio should ideally contain a mix of different types of projects with varying risk levels. Also, the amount of project should be limited. This helps in ensuring that resources can be effectively allocated to every project. At the same time, there should be a sufficient flow of resources required for new product introductions.

Advantages of NPD as part of Project Portfolio

Some of the key benefits of executing NPD as part of project portfolio management are:

Possibility to work in a centralized space and execute cross-functional collaboration
Carrying out in-built quality checks and other testing for new product development
Researching on market growth potential, product lifestyle management and market share
Management and generation of ideas in a pro-active and communicative environment
Availability of a fully-established model comprising critical resources

For all organizations, the three-step process will always remain critical for continued success in project management. This will further help in driving innovation and undertaking successful new product development. The three-step procedure involves