My previous post in this series described a method for making data-driven product decisions. But the planning process doesn’t stop once those decisions are signed off. In fact, it may be just the beginning. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. Customer feedback uncovered during the development phase could challenge planners’ assumptions
2. Sudden or unexpected changes can occur in the market place, economy or competitive landscape

And so, the fifth and final ingredient in our recipe is: Make the innovation process iterative.

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So far in this series of posts, I’ve described three ingredients for turning innovation into a core business process:

1. Create an integrated product innovation framework
2. Replace the many truths with a single, shared truth
3. Embrace the voice of your customer

This trio lays the foundation: It defines the process ground rules. It ensures that there’s transparency throughout the organization. And it opens the door to discovering what the market really needs.

The fourth ingredient ties it all together, and is simply this: Make objective decisions based on what is best for the company.

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No doubt you’ve been in meetings where a customer has said something like, “This would be an unbeatable product if only it _______.” I’ll let you fill in the blank.

Unless it’s a top-tier customer with lots of money at stake, the chance of one of these suggestions turning into a product feature is very, very small. Yet, companies receive ideas from customers all the time. And many of them are quite good.

Why? Because customers know what they need from the products they buy.

But even if individual ideas are not feature worthy, combining and analyzing them may reveal trends or needs you hadn’t considered before. And those revelations could lead to some competitive products and capabilities.
Ingredient number 3 in this series on turning innovation into a core business process is simple: Embrace the voice of your customer.

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This post was originally titled Finding a New Way with Your Product Roadmap, but that seemed a tad mundane when you’re trying to imply that the importance of Innovation and Transparency goes beyond Requirements Management.

A little mental-twister and we have a variant of you can’t get there from here because, according to software industry driver, Scott Sehlhorst, most teams have transparency in some, but not all parts of their product innovation process. The benefit to having more transparency can include improved internal stakeholder relationships, increased stakeholder self-perception of roles, and better understanding of customer’s problems so you focus less on a ‘list’ of features to implement. Benefits that can help reach your destination, so you can get “here” instead of “there”.

To learn more, join Scott Sehlhorst at the third of our five-part “How To” Transparency webinar series on Wednesday July 28, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific, 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Austin-based Scott Sehlhorst created the Tyner Blain management consultancy in 2005, following eight years in mechanical engineering and another eight in artificial intelligence software. His blog, tynerblain.com, is one of the most influential sources of thought leadership in the software development industry.

The series will continue with webinars featuring industry experts Tom Grant and Roy Wildeman of Forrester Research Inc. They will share their real-world anecdotes and best practices to help organizations learn how to define successful products, bring them to market faster, and align product development processes with corporate strategic goals.

You can register for the single webinar or for the whole series on our Product Innovation Management Channel. We look forward to your participation, hope you can attend.

Follow us on Twitter (@accept360) for the latest and greatest information on this Transparency Series.

A talent for bluffing and obfuscation comes in handy when playing poker. If you’re good at it, you can amass a hefty personal fortune.

Now imagine a poker table with marketing, engineering, finance and the Blue Sky team each sitting around trying to outwit one another.

Regrettably, too many companies behave this way when it comes to product innovation and development. Individuals and departments try to win executive favor, budget dollars and personal power at the expense of customer value and company success.

In that kind of environment, product team members will make unilateral decisions… ignore agreed-to decisions… compete against each other… and blame each other. They’ll hold their cards close to the vest by maintaining program data in spreadsheets and static documents, declaring them unavailable to others on the product team.
Innovation expert Paul Sloane has blogged that this kind of internal politics “can reach the ridiculous stage where the enemy is seen as another department inside rather than the competitors outside.”

This situation leads us to the second ingredient in this series of posts on transforming the innovation process: Replace the many truths with a single, shared truth.
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