Establishing Quantitative Economic Value for Features and Functionality of New Products and New Services (CHAPTER N)

Abstract

This chapter has two key themes: (1) a list of customer needs is interesting, but insufficient for many development decisions, (2) establishing a quantified, dollar value for each requirement is more helpful. To that end, we present an approach and method to establishing the quantitative monetary value for new product features and performance. This approach is targeted to product development managers and engineers engaged at the “front-end” of the product development process when the decisions about selection and trade-off of product functions and features are made. This approach examines the customer’s business operations and essentially establishing their business case for your product down to the feature and performance levels. This provides for much better trade-off decisions in new product development. This approach also helps to identify whitespace opportunities, those new product and/or service opportunities that are not being served by any current product. Moreover, because the methodology is fine grained, the whitespace opportunities are resolved into clear and actionable product development projects.