CASE STUDY PRESENTATIONS

IBM | TransUnion | Hospira | Boeing | Medtronic
Texas Instruments | Boston Scientific | Analog Devices

Using Pipeline Management to get Profit

Paul Aspinwall
Process Architect
IBM

Efficient Solution Engineering through Portfolio Management

Cathy Madden
VP Business Planning
TransUnion LLC

&
Piyush Sanghani
Sr. Product Research Manager
Product Dev. & Management
TransUnion LLC

Developing successful new products in today’s marketplace requires more than just great ideas.  Similar to an architect engineering the construction of a new apartment building, product developers at information solutions companies must consider their objectives, resources and perceived customer value proposition long before a blueprint can be drawn.  Accordingly, these companies are employing progressive portfolio management practices aimed at creating alignment across the enterprise.  The goal is to maximize profitable growth and gain efficiencies for centralized resources.

This session will center on a case study of a newly launched TransUnion business and will demonstrate how portfolio management practices can be leveraged to support a strategy, build alignment and improve the allocation of both investment dollars and human resources.

Key Take-aways:

• Tips for getting started with portfolio management – learn what works, what doesn’t

• Strategies for fitting portfolio management into your product development process – set product priorities that align with strategy and growth objectives

• How to create tangible outcomes of business planning initiatives – allow for strategic deployment of resources

Jerry Groen
Senior Program manager
Hospira
&
Gene Kania
Consultant
mc2solutions

According to recent surveys on new product development, the Stage-Gate™ process is used in 96% of organizations today – yet, very few use it effectively. This presentation will examine Hospira’s successful integration of a Stage-Gate™ process and Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM).  At the portfolio level, CCPM can be used to synchronize project work flows across global resources and at the project level, it engages Buffer Management to deal with uncertainty in timelines and set task level priorities for resources. This presentation will examine Hospira’s implementation process of this combined approach to increasing productivity as well as current results and next steps for further application.  

 Key Take-aways:

• Learn how to successfully integrate Stage-Gate™ and CCPM to achieve effective portfolio, resource and project management.

• Learn how Stage-Gate™ provides structure and accountability to keep the entire portfolio on track and in constant view of senior management.

• Learn how CCPM manages resources globally to ensure portfolio achievability and locally to eliminate bottlenecks during project execution.

Exploring Synergies Between Strategic Roadmapping and Portfolio Management

Ben Almojuela
Associate Technical Fellow
Boeing Commercial Airplanes

Many organizations utilize a Portfolio Management process to allocate R&D resources, make decisions about R&D projects, and align the portfolio of projects to goals and strategies. However, Portfolio Management is only one of the critical components of a long-term strategic planning process. The “longer view” required to make Portfolio Management really effective can be provided by a complementary Strategic Roadmapping process.

Mr. Almojuela will discuss the synergy between Strategic Roadmapping and Portfolio Management based on his leadership in development work for both processes at Boeing.

Key Take-aways:

• Understanding why Strategic Roadmapping and Portfolio Management are key to a robust Strategic Planning process

• How to integrate Strategic Roadmapping and Portfolio Management processes for optimal strategic planning 

• How to promote collaboration rather than conflict with Strategic Roadmapping and Portfolio Management

Technology Road Mapping for Product Portfolio Management at Boston Scientific

Richard Traxler
Manager, Technology Planning
Boston Scientific Corporation

Mr. Traxler will examine how Boston Scientific Corporation is road-mapping its technology development into a predictable frequency of product launches that meet market needs.  This process of road-mapping has proved successful in portfolio planning for both small and large business franchises.

Key Take-aways

• Tools to help reduce the gap between “what technologies marketing wants” and “what technologies R&D can deliver”

• Tools for translating “market-speak” (Voice of the Customer) into “techno-speak” (project scope)

• Tools for prioritizing the technology projects to ensure that resources are allocated to meet business needs.

• Tools for acknowledging that both Marketing and R&D have valuable perspectives R&D priorities.

• Tools for creating R&D technology strategies.

Leveraging Organizational Structure, Portfolio Management Process and Roadmapping Tools to Optimize the Product Portfolio

David Griffiths
Senior Project Manager
Affymetrix

Key Considerations When Implementing Pipeline Management

Hal Kaufman
Senior Manager
Cardiac Rhythm Management
Medtronic

It’s a common problem, right? You think you have too many projects going on at once, they’re not sufficiently staffed, schedules are slipping, and people feel over-committed. To top it off, you’ve got some projects nearing completion and you’re not sure when (or whether) you should start-up the next project in line. Unfortunately, you lack the data you need to help drive these decisions and the needed changes in behavior. You make the decision to collect data, but wonder what’s the best approach – from which functions should you collect data? what level of detail is required: quarterly or monthly data, individual person level or just to the discipline or skill level, data for all projects or just new product development projects? Is it necessary to purchase a software tool help to make sense of all the data?

Hal Kaufman will speak to his experiences and learnings while implementing pipeline management practices across the core development functions.  Specifically, he will address: 

• How do pipeline management, portfolio management, and resource management fit together?

• What are the key things to consider when implementing pipeline management practices?

• What role can software tools play and what do you need to watch out for?

New Product Development Knowledge Reuse for Project Pipeline Management

Curt Raschke
Sr. Member, Technical Staff
Texas Instruments

Most New Product Development professionals are familiar with the “Rob Peter to Pay Paul” pipeline management technique – a project gets behind schedule, resources are pulled from other projects in the pipeline to help out and then worry later about the impact of removing these resources from other projects. Unfortunately, simply attributing the problems to poor risk management or poor project planning only describes the symptoms without necessarily attacking the root cause.

A comprehensive study of problem projects at Texas Instruments revealed that in the vast majority of cases, the “unforeseen” risks, risk mitigation strategies, and development activities were actually well known – just not by the project team. To attack this root cause, a NPD Knowledge Reuse system was implemented to identify and continually update the knowledge that was valuable to be reused and deliver it when needed to the teams in an easy to use form. This presentation will present an overview of the system, the methodology used to develop it and the increased ability to meet project portfolio goals by the business groups that used it. 

Reclaiming Buried Treasure in Your Corporate Backyard: Leveraging Knowledge Assets to Increase New Product Success

Dermot O'Farrell
Director, Business Process
Analog Devices
&
Ken Bruss
Consultant
Red Oak Group

For mature product development companies, with mature processes, a lot of the PLM improvement initiatives are only producing incremental gains. The area where companies need to increasingly focus is effectively managing their knowledge assets. This involves ensuring that customer data collected by Customer Service, Sales and Marketing is fed forward to the folks who define portfolio strategy. Equally important is that the experience of the manufacturing organization with released parts is fed forward in planning derivatives. "Organizational gold" to be re-claimed includes internal best practice (instead of merely benchmarking outside, benchmark inside), benefiting from lessons learned rather than repeating mistakes, technology re-use as a means of reducing risk and increasing return on capital investment. Ken Bruss will present the business case for managing knowledge assets and Dermot O’Farrell will describe how ADI's portfolio management process benefits from utilizing in-house knowledge in making product development decisions.

Key Take-aways

• How to ensure that customer feedback from prior projects is fed forward to define portfolio strategy

• The value of technology re-use to reduce risk and increase ROI