New product introductions (NPIs) require input, support, and hard work from many functional areas. From engineering to procurement, supply chain to manufacturing, it takes a coordinated effort to move these strategically vital projects to a successful completion. A core element in that coordination is developing a single source of truth for project management documentation that every stakeholder group contributes to and can use to inform their decision-making, assess risks, and ensure the product launch achieves the expected results.
But what are you missing if you don’t have project management documentation that serves as a single source of truth, and what happens if you charge ahead without it?
Silos abound, and so do the truths that live inside them
Many functional groups contribute to NPI projects, but very few of these departments have experience working closely together. For example, the relationship between engineering and procurement has probably been limited to sourcing materials based on long-established specifications. That’s a much different conversation than creating specifications for a new product and procuring the necessary resources to support templates, prototypes, demonstration models, or individual parts for destructive testing.
With their own daily workflows and processes to think about, each functional area can develop a project plan based only on their group’s needs. But these internal plans often ignore (or worse, make a lot of incorrect assumptions about) everything else. Suppose an internal team targets an initial testing date for the new product but doesn’t address all the activities that need to happen outside its discrete silo. Their plan may look good on paper, but it won’t survive contact with reality.
Bringing the right people together around the same truth
Before an NPI team can create a realistic project plan that serves as a single source of truth, the functional areas must come together to achieve consensus on the project’s objectives, scope, constraints, and risks. Only when you have input from every group can you develop a project plan that’s accurate, timely, reliable, and workable. If your NPI touches one or more compliance frameworks, a fact-based and transparent project plan becomes even more critical because you must understand and account for regulatory requirements that can significantly expand the task list or influence the timeline. At PMAlliance, we are often asked to help rescue at-risk projects. Our experience digging into where things went wrong with these efforts shows that failing to involve the necessary folks early enough in an NPI—getting them talking and aligned on the same page—dramatically increases the likelihood of show-stopping challenges.
Communication, facilitation, and a clear view of your project
Decisions in one area of a product launch project will undoubtedly affect activities in other places, and a team-based approach ensures that your project plan recognizes and accounts for these interconnections. An experienced facilitator can help extend the communication and collaboration efforts across all functional areas. Without this early focus on inclusivity, your NPI could head off course mid-project—after you’ve made promises and spent significant resources—when opportunities to fix things are limited and very expensive.
A project management partner can collaborate with your NPI sponsors and other team members to set clear expectations and create a thorough project charter. By prioritizing team involvement in the planning process, we can help identify knowledge gaps and ensure that your NPI project has an accurate schedule that stakeholders can use as a guiding reference for success and serve as a single source of truth for the project team.
PMAlliance, Inc uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project portfolio management.