Measuring Product Development II

ABSTRACT

GGI's renowned MPD Seminar, attended by more than 5000 people across three continents, has been enhanced to reflect the more advanced state of metrics practice that now exists. MPD II was originally created for second year students in the Masters of Engineering Management program at The Gordon Institute of Tufts University.

Practitioners are expected to have a basic understanding of metrics and measurement and its associated terminology across product development and R&D environments. The seminar addresses a number of key operating issues where improved quantification and measurement is known to improve business decisions and heighten the awareness of business performance.

The seminar will begin with "leveling" topics to insure that seminar attendees enter the more complicated topics sharing a common initial basis of metrics knowledge. A number of specific topics, which are known business issues in many companies, will then be addressed.

Pipeline & Capacity Management: How does one measure the throughput and yield in the product development pipeline? How much should a company "put in" to insure throughput meets the business goals for new products?

Hurdle Rates: How much revenue and profit should exist in a preliminary way for a company to decide to further investigate a product idea? How much revenue and profit should exist for the company to approve a product for development? How do these decisions change with the availability of additional capacity, or outsourcing? How do the hurdle rates change as a company grows in size?

Trade-Off Analysis: How does one prioritize between getting to market, maximizing gross margin, staying within budget, and/or offering every feature identified in the product requirements document?

Break-Even Time & Time-To-Profit: What is the difference between these measures? How does behavior change when one or the other is used?

Risk & Complexity: Are these two variables the same, or different? What are the components of each? When does it make sense to go to this level of detail?

Planning, Proactive, & Predictive Metrics: What are these types of metrics? How many of these should exist in a balanced set of R&D metrics? [This subject will be the total focus of Day 2 of the Metrics Summit.]

The seminar will conclude with a discussion of a practical framework in which to develop a set of metrics to measure the R&D organization as a whole. Methods will be offered that enable practitioners to "roll-up" project and functional measures so that they are useful overall measures of organization capability and productivity. [This subject will be the total focus of Day 3 and 4 of the Metrics Summit.]