While compressed product development often means reducing a multi-year process to months, what happens when an innovative new product, its brand, and its introductory campaign must be developed within a few weeks? Highly compressed development cycles are possible only within certain product categories and require strategic input from the top, quick decision-making from the team managers, and the right skills within the development team.

If you’re faced with an extraordinary schedule for bringing a product to market, here are a few key process elements to follow:

1. Maintain Strategic Input & Authority—Having a small team with direct input from the president of the company allows the team the authority to position a product and its brand appropriately for the market and company.



2. Select the Right Team—Including Vendors—Select outside resources at the outset and create early partnerships. Manufacturing vendors must be on the team from the beginning, along with marketing, design, engineering, and branding.
3. Establish a Concentrated Project Plan—The plan should be short, concise, and clearly understood by the entire team. Design criteria should be prioritized and labeled “required” or “desirable” appropriately. Be adamant about meeting customer needs and expectations, but be flexible with most everything else.
4. Multi-shift, but Maintain Connectivity—Co-location of the team can improve communication and therefore impact schedules. But we’ve found that sometimes having teams in different time zones, like Asia and the US, can actually increase speed since work can continue round the clock. Wherever the team resides, make sure to maintain communications. Hold daily web-meetings…and stay in touch and available until the project is complete.



5. Focus on the Unknown First—The high-risk parts of the project may need a separate team and parallel path running along the rest of the project. But you won’t know that if you don’t dig into it first, and it will come back and bite you later.
6. Take Advantage of New Rapid Production Technologies—New manufacturing technologies produce prototypes and production parts in days, even hours. Partner with the right vendor early in the process.
7. Reward Simple Solutions—Simple, elegant solutions, while difficult to achieve, are essential to highly compressed product development programs.
8. Run Multiple Parallel Processes—Design / engineering / testing can run as one holistic activity, running in parallel with brand and packaging development.

Developing products in a matter of weeks is risky. But getting to market quickly can secure the big win. These steps will reduce your risk and improve chances of success.