Lean Agile Product and Portfolio Management

Entrepreneurs and company managers commonly find themselves in situations where:

• Products are developed with solutions that are considered innovative and are instead resounding flops
• Projects do not take off on schedule
• Designers carry out activities without any adherence to “official” development processes, believing them to be inconsistent with what happens in reality
• In some product lines the company is not competitive on price and it is not clear how much in the products is either value or non-value, non-lean waste.

To remove these and other critical issues, CONSIDI has developed significant experience and in-depth knowledge of the most advanced Lean-Agile methodologies to help customers “cultivate” innovation to take products to market with the right value to compensate investors.

Everyone agrees that innovation is vital to the success of any company. However, for it to be effective, project development time must be synchronised with the timing “dictated” by the business.

When we are called upon to work with an organisation to improve product development, we encourage starting with an initial status assessment through a structured assessment led by one of our experienced consultants. A correct understanding of the initial state provides a shared and collective understanding of the potential for improvement by applying Lean-Agile principles.

Lean-Agile principles result in:

• More efficient use of time and consequently, increase in the number of manageable projects with the same resources (CADENCE or “rhythm” of innovation principle).
• Greater speed in taking innovation to market (FLOW and KNOWLEDGE REUSE principles).

The sequence “anticipation, vision, planning, feasibility and development” is the ground on which to place these principles and grow the different methods and tools that will be proposed.

Often the generation of ideas is remarkable but their selection in line with business strategies becomes an “ad personam” and unstructured process. In addition, the project plan becomes a cauldron where all ideas are put in without considering capacity constraints.

SWIRL is a specific Lean Agile Portfolio Management methodology based on the Cadence and Flow principles of Lean Product Development - LPD, and forms the skeleton of the product development planning process. This process starts with the idea/opportunity gathering phase and ends with the generation of a medium/long-term plan. The objective of SWIRL is to improve decision-making and generate a feasible and cadenced Product Plan that meets the medium/long-term business strategy.

Swirl Portfolio Management is a methodology developed by Considi that aims to address the following business needs:

Swirl Portfolio Management is also supported by a cloud-based tool, the Swirl System, which enables user accessibility and real-time data management.

The current competitive environment and turbulence in many sectors require companies to significantly improve their performance, particularly those acting on product cost.

Our answer is the application of DTV (Design to Value) methodologies, an approach that considers different perspectives:

• What the customer wants
• What competitors are offering
• What is the cost of producing and distributing the product
• How much in the products is value-added or not

This approach has enabled Considi to develop a wide range of methods and tools over the years, including:

• Range optimisation to cover the highest value segments or avoid overlaps

• Creating synergies between products by choosing among different strategies (per platform, modular, mass production)

• Reducing variety by minimising the number of specific parts and components

• Reducing product costs by deploying cost targets and identifying possible alternatives to reduce costs