Why do products fail? What Executives and Product Managers need to know to improve their odds for product success.

2. Why do products fail?
How can we improve our
rate of success?
REQUIREMENTS

3. 24 – 46 %
Myth 80%
XXX
of new products
fail within 6
months
- How Customers Think, p. 3, Gerald Zaltman, 2003

4. - Research by the Product Development Institute (PDI) and APQC,
December 2010. Similar results from research by PDMA in 2004.

5. 6 Barriers

6. Barrier #1 – We gather superficial data
Short interviews
Multiple choice surveys
Demographics
Averaging/”bucketizing”
 Deeper insights require trust, open
questions and exploration.

7. Barrier #2 – We apply wrong methods
surveys focus groups
interviews observation
prototyping Requirements workshops
innovation games brainstorming
 Surveys and focus groups are not effective for developing and
evaluating new product ideas. Unconscious thoughts are the
most accurate predictors of what people will actually do.
- Gerald Zaltman, How Customers Think

8. Barrier #3 – What they say isn’t what they do

9. Barrier #4 – We bias the process

10. Barrier #5 – We inject error through focus groups
One-on-one interviews are as
effective as an equal number
of focus groups.
- Griffin and Hauser, “The Voice of the Customer”
 Improve results via delphi method and innovation games

11. Barrier #6 – We interpret the results our way
Over 80% of market research
serves mainly to reinforce
existing conclusions.
- Robert Deshpande, Using Market Knowledge, 2001

12. Barriers to good requirements
We gather superficial data
We apply wrong methods
What they say isn’t what they do
We bias the process
We inject error through focus groups
We interpret the results our way

13.  Business Analysis Book of Knowledge (BABOK)
 How Customers Think, Gerald Zaltman
 Innovation Games, Luke Hohmann
 Gamestorming, Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and
James Macanufo
Pat Scherer
pat@thedetailperson.com
http://www.slideshare.net/patscherer/