Moving into Project Initiation and Project Planning before the project has received approval through the project selection process can lead to wasted time and resources, especially if the project is not ultimately approved. A delicate balance must be maintained between providing enough information to adequately support your Project Proposal and expending too much time and effort. The challenge lies in presenting an exceptionally elaborated and convincing proposal that would surely get selected by the commissioner ( chairman, director...). Given that those individual can be sometimes far too removed, how do you efficiently make them understand the importance of your proposal and get their approval to launch the project?
This is a very good question I was thinking about the same thing. You basically have to be able to sell a product that is not even designed yet to some important people. I also thought of how the product you have described to them would probably not be the finally product that you end up making. With this being said I think the way to propose your project would be to really explain how important your "problem" is. Once you do that then you want to explain how your product with efficiently solve this problem. Do not focus too much on what the product would be but more on what the product will do. This is how I would tackle the situation but I am not in industry so I do not know what actually works.
This is a really good question as it begs the question of what is the minimum amount of detail one should put into a project proposal in order to get it approved but not waste time on other projects in order to maximize efficiency. Although I do not have too much industry experience regarding this matter, I would imagine that creating a "barebones" skeleton and outline for the project is a must while the semantics of all the details are secondary and would detract from the proposal. It should be concise and easy to understand so that the approver can clearly see what the project offers and how it is beneficial to the company. Thus, giving the context of the project, what it is, why it is important to the approver and how it will be carried out are important for the proposal.
If you want people to listen, you need to speak about something they care about. Organization will always look at what revenue can this product give back to us, Different new doors that this product will open and new ares to expand in. It is not only about what problem this product can solve or how it going to help people life, which indeed are most important when the project going to start,but we need to let it start first by getting the approval.
Although great points were made, the most important things are numbers. How much money are you going to save?, how much profit we you going to make?. How long is it going to take?. What's the market of this product? While presenting a project to investors, directors, etc. the plan should be concise with goals and milestones, and finally result.
Although great points were made, the most important things are numbers. How much money are you going to save?, how much profit we you going to make?. How long is it going to take?. What's the market of this product? While presenting a project to investors, directors, etc. the plan should be concise with goals and milestones, and finally result.
I definitely agree with this statement. At the end of the day, the primary thing individuals deciding which projects should be worked on is money. After all, you are part of a business. So, they will want to know how much revenue this product is going to generate, how much of a market share could this potentially give us / can we take market share from our competitors, how much is it going to cost us to develop this product, etc. Sometimes, the short term returns won't look promising, but it might still make sense to work on the project.
For example, you have a product that is leading a certain area of the market (area "A") and your competitors have something similar, but not as great. However, your competitors have a product that's doing well in another area of the market (area "B"), but you don't have anything to compete in that area. The customers that use all your other products love what you have to offer, but they still use your competitor's products for certain things. Your company may decide to develop a product to compete in area "B" of the market in an effort to draw customers away from your competitors and make them exclusive users of your products. In this scenario, you could pitch to the investors, directors, etc. that although you don't plan on making a ton of money on this specific product, by taking customers away from your competitors, your overall share of the market will increase dramatically.
The project proposal should be informative and persuasive. This could be a seed that gives birth to million-dollar projects. So, project proposals should be made more precise, object oriented, customer satisfactory and should be of clearer. As moreover companies will always look onto about what revenue can this product give back to them. Hence the project proposal presentation should contain a clear goal prospective while presenting infront of the investors and sponsors.
I agree to the previous posts, being able to analyze problem and describe what your product will do to solve this problem would be a good starting approach to propose a new product to a company. As long as you talk about an issue that is relative to the companies current solutions, the company may request more research be performed before starting with a new product. Revenue will always come if the product works as advertised.
I agree with the point regarding money being the central issue.
Additionally, I will borrow from a related question about feasibility.
Below I have listed the steps recommended for feasibility.
These are the very steps which will provide the data on which Project approval will be based.
Regarding money, first three can be used to show how revenue can be generated by the undertaking the project initiaitive.
Within the market survey one could project how the resource currently available can be purposed to possible generate revue over some time horizon based on comparable services, or product and the identified market niche identified to be capitalized.
1. Conduct a Preliminary Analysis
2. Prepare a Projected Income Statement
3. Conduct a Market Survey, or Perform Market Research
4 Plan Business Organization and Operations
5 Prepare an Opening Day Balance Sheet
6 Review and Analyze All Data
7 Make a Go/No-Go Decision
To get your project proposal approved, you have to identify your target market by:
1- study the demand in the market.
2- study the competitive product.
3- know your customers.
These can higher the chance of your proposal being approved. Also, if the outcomes of the project are desirable to the organization that you presented it to could support your proposal.
I completely agree with previous ideas just want to mention that to achieve approval in your project proposal, that should be instructive and convincing, meaning your idea or proposal not only must have very detailed information but also it must be something which is in need of your customers.
A project proposal is approved when you provide clear information about the idea, define its benefits, create a proper roadmap for the entire process. But the companies or the people who approve the projects mainly look at the expenses for the project and profits at the end of the project. So the proposal has to have a good idea of the expenditure of the project. Proposals are mostly likely to be approved when it is a solution for a current problem or has a great demand in the market at that point of time.
I agree with the key points you mentioned regarding how to identify your target market when proposing a project you wish to launch. From my experience in working in a medical device company, we focus on exactly those three aspects. However, the most important point you pointed out was knowing your customers, and their wants. Working in the quality department, and specifically in the complaints department, the feedback given from the customers is what drives product development. If not taken into consideration in regards to the product development. If you don’t consider the feedback from your customers, in regards to your product for example, you may lose your customers to competitors.
Although great points were made, the most important things are numbers. How much money are you going to save?, how much profit we you going to make?. How long is it going to take?. What's the market of this product? While presenting a project to investors, directors, etc. the plan should be concise with goals and milestones, and finally result.
I definitely agree with this statement. At the end of the day, the primary thing individuals deciding which projects should be worked on is money. After all, you are part of a business. So, they will want to know how much revenue this product is going to generate, how much of a market share could this potentially give us / can we take market share from our competitors, how much is it going to cost us to develop this product, etc. Sometimes, the short term returns won't look promising, but it might still make sense to work on the project.
For example, you have a product that is leading a certain area of the market (area "A") and your competitors have something similar, but not as great. However, your competitors have a product that's doing well in another area of the market (area "B"), but you don't have anything to compete in that area. The customers that use all your other products love what you have to offer, but they still use your competitor's products for certain things. Your company may decide to develop a product to compete in area "B" of the market in an effort to draw customers away from your competitors and make them exclusive users of your products. In this scenario, you could pitch to the investors, directors, etc. that although you don't plan on making a ton of money on this specific product, by taking customers away from your competitors, your overall share of the market will increase dramatically.
This answer sums up a competitive business model to help fill in gaps in a product portfolio. Project initiation should begin prior to the approval stage so that the project manager can plan a strategy on the product. A rough marketing strategy and a few proofs of concepts would create a tangible idea senior leadership is able to envision as an investment. Once both marketing and sales profit margins have been identified (again rough estimates prior the project charter), project approval can be more definitive if there is a long term strategy. In addition to the above notions of becoming a more comprehensive company that has product lines without any gaps, a strong project initiation that would want a team to pre-plan and initiate a project before chartering are those that are revitalizing an existing product line. Surgeons, like all other consumers, like to use the product they trust, but also like a new, better version of their previous products. Someone who likes playstation as a gaming console may be invested in the company's products, but ultimately, if nothing is updated or a new console comes out, the consumer will move onto the hotter product on the market. These types of projects help sustain a product line that, although the project will not aid in large increases in revenue, will retain the consumers in the long term.
Even though engineering and design plays a huge role in coming up with a new project/product, the business need is far more important. Before presenting a project, a market research has to be done to determine the need of the product desired; without demand the product means nothing to the company and it wouldn't get approved to move forward. A market research determines exactly why people/patients are in need to this product, how this product is going to compete in the market against similar devices, and what kind of population or country are targeted. Once the team or the team leader has all those things, now it is time to create a couple of engineering concepts that would fit the customer needs and makes it look futuristic to match what is out in the market. Now a project proposal can be completed, showing some statistics and number to show how the product would be needed and proposing some engineering concept that are going to be tested and compared within the project. The ideal balance is to spend more time on the market research and so much time on the actual design since numbers are very important to the business.
