Product Development
Student 1
The potential failure of the Finnish Food Dish’s launch was the ineffectiveness of the new product development process
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The process consists of three main activities and eight tasks (Marshall, 2019). From the start, they failed to fully identify the product opportunities, which quickly spiraled down to not fully engaging in the efforts to define the product opportunity and develop the product opportunity. The failures resulted from inadequate consumer research with insufficient responses to what the consumers saw as value. For example, the owners had a vision of what they wanted, and when it was questioned or challenged, it would become a problem. The owners presented the product as novel and trendy, which made the project path-dependent making it resistant to feedback more suitable to achieve a successful launch (Ryynanen, 2014). The repackaging of the old or existing product failed to differentiate their product from others, and the claims fell far short of the customer’s expectations (Schneider, 2011). The feedback from the food customers was not as expected, and the lack of value in the pricing should have been determined early in the NPD and addressed before the launch.
Nike Inc. was formally Blue-Ribbon Sports from 1964-to 1978 and formally launched the Nike brand in 1972 (Nguyen, 2022). Nike’s success came from a consumer-driven NPD. They identified the product opportunities as a product that is a new and improved way of assisting them in physical fitness. They defined the product opportunity as not just running faster or jumping higher but assisting in more strenuous workouts. They also developed the product opportunity by offering a wide range of benefits for a large audience. Nike Inc. successfully reached its audience by differentiating itself from other similar products. The simple stance of the product must be light, comfortable, and it’s got to go the distance, which was the consumer’s demands.
Reference:
Marshall, G.W. & Johnston, M.W. (2019). Marketing management (3rd ed.). New York, NY:
McGraw Hill.
Nguyen, S. (2022). Nike Marketing Strategy: Why Nike is a marketing leader? Retrieved from https://www.mageplaza.com/blog/nike-marketing-strategy.html
Ryynanen, T. & Hakatie, A. (2014). “We must have the wrong consumers” – a case study on new food product development failure.
(Links to an external site.)
British Food Journal, 116 (4), 707-722.
Schneider, J., & Hall, J. (2011, April). Why most product launches fail. Harvard Business review. www.hbr.org
(Links to an external site.)
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Student 2
Diagnose where you consider the process went wrong in this particular case study and why
In learning about the new product development process, I read that the three activities needed to increase long term success are (1) identifying the product opportunities, (2) defining the product opportunities, (3) developing the product opportunities. The company that the article refers to had a problem from the very beginning in identifying the product opportunities. The owner of the NPD (new product development) left little room for improvement on their original product, and as they were given feedback on what they could do to improve, it was received poorly. They blamed the sample group for not understanding their product and criticizing it so harshly. Generating new ideas is important to show the company’s commitment to innovation (Marshall and Johnston, 2019). The original owners were ready to make a go-to-market mistake because they believed in their product so much despite what the data was telling them.
Identify a successful product with which you are familiar. Does your research suggest that the product adhered to any of the strategies mentioned? Evaluate what element of the product development process ensured success.
The scrub daddy is a very simple product that had a basic concept which resulted in a huge success. The inventor, Aaron Krause, developed a machine that produced a new material called urethane foam. This product opportunity allowed for a dual-texture, scratch-free sponge which was a very new concept. He originally created this form to polish cars and the design was to protect his hands from grease and oil, but when he sold his business, the new company had no need for the product, so Aaron kept his sponges. He ended up patenting the design and pitched his product to different places until QVC selected him to present. The scrub daddy sold out within 8 minutes. I think his success can be contributed to the development of product opportunity. Aaron developed a product that his customers wanted to buy and at $4 it was affordable. According to his current metrics Aaron has sold more than 25 million sponges and the company has a net worth of 170 million.
Marshall, G. W., & Johnston, M. W. (2019). Marketing management (3rd ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
Ryynänen, T., & Hakatie, A. (2014). “We must have the wrong consumers” – a case study on new food product development failure. British Food Journal, 116(4), 707-722. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-08-2012-0215
(Links to an external site.)
rose, k., (2022) Bizjournals.com.
Student 3
A WBS is a breakdown of the deliverables and sub-deliverables to complete a project, while the project network provides a timeline and dependencies between those deliverables (Gray & Larson, 2021, pp. 114-115, 171-172). While making a project network may be quicker, you still need the WBS to cover the fine details of the project. If only making a project network, small sub-deliverables may be missed. Creating only the WBS may miss a critical path component that a project network may reveal. Having both gives a project manager a good overview of what is needed to complete each deliverable (WBS) and how it all fits together (project network). I look at it as the WBS would be your Excel sheet, and the project network would be the pivot table with graphs extracted from the data.
A project that I participated in lost a key person about halfway through. A server build was on the critical path. A network build was not on the critical path and had twenty-eight days of free and total slack. The loss of the resource affected the server build. The project manager shifted a resource away from the network build to cover the server build to keep the critical path going. By making the shift, we kept the original project timeline and experienced a twelve-day delay, bringing the network build to sixteen slack days. The project manager employed slack correctly. They could have increased the workload on the server build resource but instead chose to take advantage of slack to keep the project on time and prevent resources from being overworked by shifting a resource over from another part of the project. Lessons learned would be that no project goes perfectly to plan, and unexpected events will occur.
Purposely building slack into a project would be accomplished using feeder buffers and a final project buffer within critical chain scheduling (Schwalbe, 2015). These are typically displayed on the project network. It is ethical to use these and disclose them. For example, total float being met means the project is on time. Free float is just as crucial by allowing a project manager to assign additional resources to a constrained project, monitor delays, or task another team with other work if a delay is present on a feeder task.
References
Gray, C. F. & Larson, E. W. (2021). Project Management: The Managerial Process. McGraw-Hill Education.
Schwalbe, K. (2015). An Introduction to Project Management. (Fifth ed.). Schwalbe Publishing.
Student 4
The difference between WBS and a project network is, WBS takes the whole project and breaks it down to smaller packages. This will make large projects easier to manage. A project network can then take the WBS package and plan, schedule and monitor the progress (Larson, 2020). The relation can be dependent and drawn similar, but each will have their own purpose. Where WBS takes the project and makes it hierarchical and the project network sequential. This means that for the project network to clearly display all the elements of a project. That WBS clearly identifies all the elements of a project to be displayed in a project network.
I have seen projects finish early during my time in the military. There has never been a time where the PM would take advantage of slack time. Once the project is completed, everyone would just return to their duties and then there was always something missed. Sometimes it was a small error and sometimes it was a major error. What I learned from applying slack is when there is slack time. Utilizes that time to follow up on some completed tasks or communicate with the team to see if they have any feedback.
When the PM attempts to bring the project back to meet the due date. Usually, the actions taken are to bring back the team, after they are released, then scramble to ensure that the project is complete. Now, the decision made to react is understandable. The team on the other hand, were very frustrated because they were working in their daily duties and had to reschedule appointments and conference calls. If I remember correctly, there was no time loss, and the project was delivered on-time. Luckily there was slack time to utilize to fix the error. Lessoned I learned was to utilize slack time in way that benefits the project and the team.
I believe that it is ethical to consider building slack into a project. But it should be realistic, and a good PM would understand its purpose. The reason is due to budget and resources which are tied to all planning. So, if building slack into a project is oversized this means that budget and resources are oversized also. This is where I believe it can be considered as unethical.
Reference:
Larson, E. W. (2020). Project Management: The Managerial Process (8th Edition). McGraw-Hill Higher Education (US). https://ecampus.vitalsource.com/books/9781260736205
