Physical Product Sprint

At M&G, design is extremely important both within the leather hides and the finished products. Within my department of the finished product, design and development have always been a bit siloed from the rest of the company. New products were developed and presented to our C Suite and marketing team as a final option with a looming launch deadline that did not allow for updates or changes. We have an extremely talented Director of Design, so the designs are incredible, but product development (me) was running up against the launch clock to accomplish all and get sign off from each significant stakeholder.

During Fall 2020, many competitors were slowing down product development. I wanted to take advantage of the availability at manufacturing partners and create as many samples as possible. I used my new knowledge of sprint planning and sprints to create a new PD process.

I outlined the goals for the team:

• Double new products developed
• Streamline product development process to engage all stakeholders
• Expand into new product categories to gain more customer and increase profitability of existing customers

Finally, I presented how we would embark on the new process:

Physical product has a much different lead-time than tech products, so the timeline for the above process was 12 weeks. (Yikes!) At the end of the process, I analyzed the “sprint” success. I was not able to double the amount of products created for a variety of reasons, but I was excited that the viability of samples created was increased (50% viability to 90%!). Physical products have such an interesting process; so many can be created and not mimic the design specs or original ideas at all. They will be put aside or updated in the future. We were able to increase the amount of samples that will be passed to production and launched. Each stakeholder felt more involved in the process and products had support from each individual and department. One of the biggest wins was having products ready for multiple launch seasons of 2021 instead of designing for the upcoming season!

Interested in seeing the products? Follow Moore & Giles for the new products that will be launched throughout 2021. Know there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but with an introduction of a tech strategy framework, we saw great success!