In the 6th Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Study, conducted by Tech-Clarity and commissioned by Planview, we discovered what top product innovators are doing throughout the product development process to drive innovation. In this two-part series, we’ll explore secrets in detail. Check out part one for secrets 1-2, and read on to learn secrets 3 – 5!
Secret #3: Replace Gut Reactions with Data-Driven Decisions
A major factor in product portfolio management is data. Thirty-eight percent of top performers have immediate access to accurate data compared to 24% of all other performers. Accurate, timely data helps project teams make smart decisions, keeps a project from stalling, alerts teams to a project that may fail, and reduces risk while increasing confidence in the decisions being made.
Data comes in many forms: market research and trends, project costs, resource allocation, profits and losses … anything that influences the project is data. For a lot of companies, this data is captured and stored in spreadsheets. Considering all the data needed for a project, is it all stored on one spreadsheet? If not, how many? How many people can make changes to these spreadsheets? Can you really trust that data?
Access to accurate and timely data plays such a crucial role in product portfolio management and top performers know this. The third secret may seem like a no-brainer, but it makes all the difference to a project timeline when decisions can be made within days because trusted data comes from a single source of truth rather than weeks when data needs to be collected from multiple spreadsheets.
Secret #4: Performance Results Come from Repeatability
Working within a well-defined, structured process makes product development more straightforward, lessens doubt in decision-making, and provides the tools necessary to be successful. One area that seems to be troublesome for most organizations is whether they should kill a product or project in the development process. Based on the feedback in the study, it’s clear there isn’t always a definition or structured process on what signifies a failing project.
Select the top 3 reasons why your company isn’t killing more products or projects during the commercialization process
There is never a problem with having enough ideas, but prioritizing those ideas is always a challenge. Continuous resource planning is where processes and data come together to really drive decisions for projects. Knowing that resource planning and killing projects should be a process and data-driven, not based on emotion, is the fourth secret of top performers. They understand it’s important to ensure you’re not half-starving all projects but investing in the ones that are doing well and will have the higher return on investment for the organization.
Secret #5: Get Your House in Order
The final secret we uncovered is that top performers are using a Product Portfolio Management solution to:
- Improve visibility with access to a single source of truth on the product portfolio
- Improve resource utilization resulting in increased project capacity
- Eliminate reliance on spreadsheets and homegrown applications
- Improve and quicken decision making based on analytics and real-time calibrated reporting
- Reduce costs through process efficiencies
A product portfolio management solution combines applications that are usually spread among multiple interfaces into a single source of truth, and the benefits are realized immediately as small adjustments can have BIG impacts on the product development process!
To hear these secrets in more detail, register for the on-demand webinar to listen to Planview’s Carrie Nauyalis and Tech-Clarity’s Jim Brown discuss the “The Surprising Secrets to Delivering Smarter, More Connected Products: Findings from the 6th Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Study” today!
Don’t forget to check out Secrets 1 and 2 that top performers are applying throughout the product development process to drive innovation!
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