In today’s complex product-development cycles, multiple teams and departments often coordinate their efforts to create the best results. Community collaboration is a vital part of this process.

Engineers, fabricators, salespeople and sourcing professionals all often have a hand in designing and launching a new product. As the number of stakeholders in the product development process increases, the more important it becomes to establish a collaborative system that allows key members to provide input and enables cross-functionality between teams. Bridging the gap between normally disparate elements in a company or supply network can help firms gain a significant advantage in new product rollout.

“Effective collaboration is a critical component of product development that can deliver significant value across an organization,” manufacturing software firm Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC) explains. “For instance, effective collaboration can dramatically improve the change process during release to manufacturing. If the design engineering and manufacturing groups are able to collaborate in real-time when managing post-production changes, both groups can quickly work to an agreeable solution, saving time, effort and rework.”

Leveraging community collaboration methods to improve communication and increase development visibility can yield tangible results. When data is shared between several collaborating groups, it becomes easier to form a broader conception of the process as a whole and to make effective decisions to guide the project toward completion.

According to a recent report from the Aberdeen Group, titled Enabling Community Collaboration in Product Development, the top-performing companies in product development have a 25 percent decrease in product time-to-market compared to average performers, 18 percent higher annual product revenue and 21 percent lower product development costs.

These top performers share several common characteristics: they are 14 percent more likely than competitors to standardize workflow for collaboration in product development; they are 64 percent more likely to specifically define and document the requirements for product information sharing; and they are 71 percent likelier to collect and manage product feedback in a central database.

In terms of key technological implementations, best-in-class companies are also likelier to incorporate virtual design and meeting collaboration tools, workflow automation and integrated enterprise systems.

Based on responses from more than 100 manufacturers from various industries, Aberdeen found that the main pressures driving businesses to adopt community collaboration measures in product development are a need to include stakeholder contributions in the development process (45 percent), the desire to shorten time-to-market rates (36 percent), the need to meet customer demand (31 percent) and the effort to improve product quality (22 percent).

“By enabling an effective communication platform for customers and employees to discuss current products, companies can identify problems much quicker. The context of these discussions can range from product defects, ensuring quality and customer commitment, to recommendations for improvement, ensuring ideas for products in the pipeline,” according to the report.

When implementing a collaborative development system, there are several important elements to consider. Aberdeen has identified these target areas as:

• Process — One of the most common steps in coordinating product development across teams is to establish a standard workflow that extends not only to engineers, manufacturers and IT specialists, but also to marketers, suppliers and any other project stakeholders.
• Organization — Once workflow standards are defined through communication tools, it is necessary to have team members at every level become accustomed to using these tools on a daily basis. Having managers and team leaders lead by example can encourage employees to harness these tools themselves.
• Knowledge Management — Centralizing product information makes it easier to provide data to project members, but not everyone may need the same type of information. Ensuring the right data gets to the right person is the key to effective knowledge management.
• Performance Management — Tracking the quantity and content of collaborative information, including comment logs and feedback, can help determine the next step in product development as well identifying where the information originates.
• Technology — There are numerous technologies that can be harnessed for collaborative efforts. The most popular tools among businesses include Web conferencing (71 percent), audio/video conferencing (70 percent), live chat applications (69 percent), blogs (48 percent) and forums (47 percent).

“With increasing competition, your organization must persistently push the limits of new product development — reducing costs, driving innovation, minimizing design cycles, and improving product quality — all while bringing products to market faster than ever,” software firm Adobe explains. “To achieve these goals, you must find better ways to communicate and collaborate across dispersed project teams and with remote suppliers, offshore production facilities and customers worldwide.”

Earlier: Design Collaboration and the Mad Dash to Product Launch

Resources

Building Winning Product Development Teams
Parametric Technology Corporation, 2003

Enabling Community Collaboration in Product Development
by William Jan
Aberdeen Group, January 2010

Product Development Collaboration
Adobe, 2010