Why do products fail?

How can we improve our rate of success?

REQUIREMENTS

80% of new products

fail within 6 months

- How Customers Think, p. 3, Gerald Zaltman, 2003

24 – 46 %

Myth XXX

- Research by the Product Development Institute (PDI) and APQC,

December 2010. Similar results from research by PDMA in 2004.

6 Barriers

Barrier #1 – We gather superficial data

Demographics

Short interviews

Multiple choice surveys

Averaging/”bucketizing”

Deeper insights require trust, open questions and exploration.

focus groups interviews

surveys

observation

Surveys and focus groups are not effective for developing and evaluating new product ideas. Unconscious thoughts are the most accurate predictors of what people will actually do. - Gerald Zaltman, How Customers Think

Barrier #2 – We apply wrong methods

innovation games

Requirements workshops

brainstorming

prototyping

Barrier #3 – What they say isn’t what they do

Barrier #4 – We bias the process

Barrier #5 – We inject error through focus groups

One-on-one interviews are as

effective as an equal number

of focus groups. - Griffin and Hauser, “The Voice of the Customer”

Improve results via delphi method and innovation games

Barrier #6 – We interpret the results our way

Over 80% of market research serves mainly to reinforce existing conclusions. - Robert Deshpande, Using Market Knowledge, 2001

Barriers to good requirements

We gather superficial data

We apply wrong methods

What they say isn’t what they do

We bias the process

We inject error through focus groups

We interpret the results our way

Pat Scherer

pat@thedetailperson.com

http://www.slideshare.net/patscherer/

Business Analysis Book of Knowledge (BABOK)

How Customers Think, Gerald Zaltman

Innovation Games, Luke Hohmann

Gamestorming, Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and

James Macanufo