PDMA Webinar on Exploratory Product Development April 27 @ 12N CST

https://www.pdma.org/event/chicago-2023-04-27

PDMA Chicago: Replacing Phase-Gate with an Adaptable Product Development Process

This session will provide an overview on an alternative approach to the traditional phased and gated process. With ExPD, unique product nuances drive the process versus prescribed documentation and activities that you find in a phased-and-gated process. ExPD is an adaptable process that leverages many agile methods.

The benefits of ExPD include:

• Speed
• Fail fast and early
• Strategic alignment
• Making uncertainties visible throughout the project
• Developing products that start with the customer
• Real-time project prioritization and resource optimization
• Learning and adapting to the unique nuances of the product
• Decreasing unnecessary activities, bureaucracy, and paperwork
• Improving decision making
• Reducing product development cost

Mary and Kathy will discuss what it takes to implement ExPD and if companies are ready to move towards a more adaptable way of developing products.  They will also provide lessons learned and a case study.

Learning Objectives:

To learn:

• A new adaptable approach to developing products
• How ExPD differs from the traditional phased-and-gated process
• How are companies reacting to ExPD? Is it too much of a mind-shift?

Mary Drotar and Kathy Morrissey:

Mary and Kathy founded the product development firm Strategy 2 Market® (s2m) in 2002. s2m specializes in helping large and mid-sized enterprises improve their product development processes.

They went on a mission to improve the traditional phased-and-gated product development process that most enterprises use today.

They developed an alternative adaptable process called Exploratory PD® (ExPD) that ultimately drives down and manages the most critical product development uncertainties and risks. Out of this process, they developed the Product Risk Framework® software tool that supports ExPD. https://prftool.com

They received a grant for the Product Risk Framework from the NSF STEM I-Corp program sponsored by the University of Chicago, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Mary and Kathy are both graduates of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Mary and Kathy recently published their book Learn & Adapt: ExPD an Adaptive Product Development Process for Rapid Innovation and Risk Reduction.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/marydrotar

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kathymorrissey