Understanding where and how to focus your time throughout the development cycle of your business can save you time and money and greatly increase your chances at success.
During my 20+ years developing products and services, I‘ve seen good people with great ideas spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and never get their idea to market. I’ve also seen and worked with a number of people who repeatedly bring successful products and service to the market on time and on budget. These people follow a process, focusing their time and effort in a planned manner.
The fact of the matter is that regardless of what you’re developing – a product or a service – they go through the same process: planning, design, product manufacture or service delivery and sales and service support. What is different is where you typically focus your time.
In general, you should allow about 25% of your time and effort to the planning stage, regardless of whether it’s a product or service.
When designing, product development is typically heavily loaded. This can account for in excess of 50% in many cases. On the service side, this is much lighter at around 25%.
For product manufacture, if you’ve done your planning and design well, you can generally use standard manufacturing processes and techniques that will minimize your time share to about 15%. Service delivery on the other hand tends to require a greater time portion at about 30%.
Similarly, for sales and service support, manufactured products can take advantage of out-of-the-box solutions such as sales samples and standard technical support and returns processing at about a 10% time portion. Services often require a more customized approach, as well as more legal and regulatory issues to manage, putting it at about 20%.
Although each project must be considered on its own merits, these general guidelines will help you to focus your time and effort and increase your ability to successfully bring your project to the market, on time and on budget.
