development

Developing a product from its initial concept to a fully realized consumable is no small feat. Product development can be a prolonged and iterative process with multiple iterations, bottlenecks, and challenges at every step of the development process. To maximize efficiency, product managers must have a clear sense of the challenges they face and the potential for product roadmap management software to help address them. So, what are the challenges encountered during product development and how does product management software help to mitigate these? Let us deep-dive into this topic.

Common Challenges Faced

• Complex Supply Chains – Manufacturing even a relatively simple product may require numerous suppliers, components, and materials. Each point along the supply chain must be harmonized with the broader product development roadmap.
• Varying Product Lifecycle Phases – Different products or components can be at various stages of development, production, or even retirement, which can be challenging to manage. Often, product managers must contend with different iterations of the same basic product or juggle the demands of various items within the product portfolio.
• Regulatory Compliance – While steel manufacturing companies have a strong impact on global trade and industry, they are often subject to stringent regulatory requirements that change over time and vary by region. Product development must always be coordinated with legal compliance, encompassing everything from consumer safety to environmental stewardship.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration – Effective product development never happens in silos. Instead, it requires multi-disciplinary teams of designers, engineers, and testers to work together in tandem. Ultimately, bringing the product to store shelves requires collaboration with sales and marketing professionals.
• Resource Allocation – Another challenge manufacturers face is ensuring their resources are allocated as effectively as possible. This includes manpower, mining plant and equipment, and raw materials. Ineffective resource allocation can yield a number of issues, including production bottlenecks that can bring the entire product development process to a standstill.

How Product Roadmap Management Software Can Help

• Visibility Across Supply Chains – Roadmap software allows teams to visualize end-to-end logistics, identifying potential bottlenecks or areas of concern as part of efforts to future-proof supply chains. This perspective can enable product managers to source new vendors or to make necessary changes to the production timeline.
• Lifecycle Management – With roadmap software, teams can track products at every stage of their lifecycle, ensuring no phase is overlooked. In other words, the right software solutions can ensure that product development teams pay an appropriate level of attention to products that are new to market (e.g., pressure vessels) and those that are close to being sunset, offering adequate support to the entire pool of customers.
• Compliance Tracking – Additionally, product software solutions can be used to track regulatory changes and ensure products remain compliant throughout their lifecycle. This is an invaluable way to alleviate some of the regulatory burdens that product managers feel.
• Enhanced Collaboration – Product roadmaps dismantle siloes and improves collaboration among product team members. A centralized dashboard fosters better communication among departments, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
• Optimized Resource Allocation – Roadmap software can help identify underutilized assets or overburdened teams by providing a visual representation of resource allocation.

Final Thoughts

It should be understood that product development is a multi-step process involving many variables and countless potential hurdles. Product managers have their work cut out for them as they seek to clear those hurdles, but product roadmap management software can be an invaluable asset. Indeed, the right road mapping tools allow for improved visibility, collaboration, agility, cost control, and more. As such, these software solutions can be the “secret sauce” in successfully realizing the manufacturer’s vision of getting a product from its initial sketch to the marketplace!