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A mARKET REquiREmEnTs’ PERsPECTivE on PRoduCT And sERviCE dEvEloPmEnT 293
We can link this idea with the idea of uncertainty reduction, discussed earlier. We
made the point that uncertainty reduces as the design progresses. This also applies to
each stage of the design, so uncertainty regarding the concept reduces through the
concept generation stage; uncertainty about the preliminary design reduces through
that phase and so on. If this is so, then there must be some degree of certainty as to
which the next stage can take as its starting point prior to the end of the previous stage.
In other words, designers can be continually reacting to a preceding stage. However,
this can only work if there is effective communication between each part of the stages.

A market requirements’ perspective on product and service
development

Products and services are developed to satisfy market needs. It follows, then, that an
important way of judging the effectiveness of the product and service development
process is to judge how it performs in terms of quality, speed, dependability, flexibility
and cost. These performance objectives have just as much relevance for the production
of new product and service ideas or designs as they do for their ongoing production
once they are introduced to the market. There is, however, a difference in judging how
development processes satisfy market needs. When customers are both familiar and
relatively satisfied with existing products and services they find it difficult to articu-
12
late their needs for novel products or services. Customers often develop an enhanced
understanding of their own needs only when they come into direct contact with the
product or service and start to use it. Many software companies talk about the ‘I don’t
know what I want but I’ll know when I see it’ syndrome, meaning that only when cus-
tomers use the software are they in a position to articulate what they do or don’t require.

quality of product and service development

In Chapter 1, when we were discussing generic performance objectives, quality was not
easy to define precisely. It is no easier when we are looking at the quality of product and
service development. However, it is possible to distinguish high-quality product and
service development from low-quality product and service development (although this
is easier to do in hindsight). A useful approach if we wish to judge ongoing product and
service development is to use the distinction between market requirements quality and
operations resource quality. By market requirements’ quality we mean the ability of the
output from the product or service development process (its final design) to meet the
requirements of the company’s intended market position. Operations resource qual-
ity indicates the extent to which the final design of the product or service allows the
exploitation of the capabilities of the company’s processes.

speed of product and service development
Fast product and service development has become the norm in many industries. Some-
times this is because the pressures of market competition have forced companies to
capture the markets’ imagination with the frequent introduction of new offerings.
Consumer electronics, for example, significantly increased the rate of new product
introduction during the 1980s and 1990s. Sometimes it is the result of fast-changing
consumer fashion. Getting to market quickly in order to capture a trend is important in

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