Client issue: Our traditional phased-and-gated process is not adapting to our business. Some of the issues we are encountering, include:
- Unnecessary paperwork and wasted activity/time/effort
- Process driving the project versus project needs driving the process (tail wagging the dog)
- Project risk treated as a one-time exercise/deliverable, and commonly not revisited
- Lack of integrated project prioritization, leading to too many active projects that cannot be properly resourced
- Spending a lot of time on projects that should have been killed earlier
- Products that did not solve a problem
- Delays to the market
Solution: Exploratory PD® (ExPD) was developed to address the client issues listed above, and it proposes a new approach to developing products, using a two-pronged solution: (1) treating product development from a comprehensive systems perspective, and (2) fundamentally redesigning the development process based on reducing project uncertainties and risks.
ExPD differs from the traditional phased-and-gated process in its fundamental redesign of the development process to reduce uncertainties and risks. It is an adaptive approach that responds quickly to internal and external factors. This process helps project teams identify, evaluate, and prioritize uncertainties and risks throughout a project. It then helps the team determine how and when to resolve the uncertainty or when it is appropriate to kill a project.