The missing piece in your product development puzzle

Call: +44 (0)23 8098 8890
E-mail:

Posted 24th September 2021, By Steve W
Our product development process

Introduction

This series of blogs will guide you through the product development process, the pitfalls and how we can help you turn your idea into reality.

Capturing your idea starting with the requirements

The more accurately you understand your requirements at the outset of your project, the more accurately we can assist you with design decisions, controlling the risks, planning and estimating the costs and delivery dates.

Capturing requirements will help you to gather input from stakeholders as well as feedback from us on any implementation implications.

It’s a good idea to rank your requirements in order of importance and consider what is your Minimum Viable Product. Keep in mind that features can often be added to products even after they’ve reached your customers. For example, hardware functions can be prepared in advanced and enabled at a later date.

An important part of the requirements capture process is to consider the ‘use cases’ for the product. This describes all the different ways an end-user might ‘use’ the product.

Where possible, requirements should be written from the perspective of the end-user and should not give the details of the technical solution. This vastly improves the understanding of the product and leaves greater scope for creativity.

Once the initial requirements are captured there are four key questions that you need to consider:

  • Will the idea work and what is the best technical solution?
  • Can it be achieved within the required timescale?
  • What development budget will be needed?
  • Can the final design achieve the target unit price?

Proving your concept

leap of faith image

The optimum solution for any project is a mixture of numerous technical and commercial factors, and the exact technical solution implemented will have a direct impact on the final products success and longevity.

An initial de-risking stage is usually a good idea when there are potentially several different technical solutions, or the concept has an element of uncertainty. This involves undertaking a tightly scoped project that produces a rapid 'proof of concept' (PoC) using as much ‘off the shelf’ technology as practical to achieve a working prototype as quickly as possible.

This approach has many advantages since it:

  • determines the optimal technical solution in the fastest time and for the lowest initial cost
  • demonstrates the concept on the bench and to your customers
  • allows refinement of the requirements and use cases
  • drives your project forward from a solid technical and commercial foundation
  • identifies and controls the project risks at the earliest opportunity
  • highlights any potential supply chain issues such as component availability
  • cements our working relationship

 

Image credit: Photo by Sammie Chaffin on Unsplash

 

Engaging us

Depending on your needs, we offer a range of engagement options. A time and materials approach is better suited for the PoC stage where the technical challenges are not fully understood. This allows engineering effort to be focused where needed but within agreed commercial boundaries.

Alternatively, a fixed price contract is available where a largely complete set of requirements are available. This is ideal when project risks are understood and the deliverables can be defined.

What ITDev can do for you

We can assist you in making the right technical and commercial decisions at the outset of your project. This will give you a better product and reduce the time to market, overall development costs and project risks.  

If you have any questions or would like to find out how we can help you with your product development journey, initial discussions are always free of charge. We would be delighted to speak to you so please contact us.

Forthcoming blog

In my next blog, I will cover the main development stages including software and electronic development, manufacture and system testing.


Steve

Product Development Manager

30 years of NPD experience at engineering, project manager and Director level

I joined ITDev in the Spring of 2021 and my role is to concentrate on managing Sales, Operations and R&D activities for product-based projects.

I have 30 years’ experience in New Product Development and contract Research and Development within the Oil & Gas, Medical, Industrial Sensors, Motorsport and Defence sectors.  I specialise in taking an initial product idea from prototypes through full development, verification, manufacture, validation, delivery and on-going product support.  

I was attracted to ITDev due to its strong core values, interesting and broad range of technical development projects, flexible working environment and a very friendly and supportive team.

My passion outside of ITDev is for heritage building and garden renovation largely driven by the challenge of re-building my 1890s property with my family.

View all posts by Steve    |    View all ITDev team members

IET Enterprise Partners logo

Latest Blog Posts

VPK120 development board pictured wearing ear defenders with silent smiley on the fan
Posted 13th June 2023, By Aysa D
This blog contains the final steps for adding the minimal IP to send the necessary SYSMON data to the System Controller for controlling the fan on the AMD ...more
VPK120 development board pictured wearing ear defenders
Posted 25th May 2023, By Aysa D
Whilst developing on an AMD Versal VPK120 you will want to control the fan speed to keep the noise at manageable levels. This guide captures the steps taken to ...more
Robin on a bird table
Posted 20th January 2023, By Andy C
The customer is always right, and he hasn't changed his requirements, but the consultant says they're in constant flux. Who's right? Let's explore further ...
JonO interviewing Matthew
Posted 30th June 2022, By Jon O
30th June and it's Matthew's 2 year anniversary of joining as a full-time member of staff. Matthew spent 2 summers working for us as an intern before joining ...more

Latest News

Posted 12th September 2023
ITDev is proud to announce the launch of a new FPGA video IP core. The core allows integrators to quickly and easily add high-quality colour space conversion ...more
Shot of Sydney Harbour Bridge
Posted 3rd March 2023
We welcome David back from Australia and review some of the actvities we've been engaged with in February 2023.
Posted 9th August 2022
Last month we attended the second TechNES FPGA Frontrunners event, here's our write up from the day ...
Posted 28th July 2022
Here's a short report on our attendance at the ECS Taster week Careers Fair On Tues 26th July. A chance to promote industrial opportunties to year 11 students ...more