decisionAccelerator Use Cases

Strategy Formulation

A primary application of the decisionAccelerator methodology is on strategy projects where we define and operationalize business strategy. This involves aligning (or “mapping”) business strategy with respect to the vision-goals-strategies--programs, refining and normalizing the information across the organization, prioritizing goals-strategies-programs, and finally deploying the programs that most effectively fulfill the business goals.

New Product Development Project Portfolio

decisionAccelerator is also used to do new product portfolio prioritization, cost benefit analysis, and modeling of critical constraints such as budget, resources, and risk to develop the optimal product portfolio based on business objectives. decisionAccelerator permits management teams to identify the proper mix of development projects to maximize their business goals/market strategy, and to determine the resources required in order to fulfill those goals.

The key to success in any technology business is to be able to prioritize development projects based on their contribution to the business's goals, noting that these goals can often be conflicting. Further, it is essential for management teams to have tools available to model their portfolio with real-world constraints like reduced budgets, limited or shrinking resource availability, technical and/or marketing risks, etc. decisionAccelerator was designed specifically to provide this capability so that alignment of projects and business goals is continually maintained.

The modeling process involves prioritizing projects based on business objectives and then simulating multiple cost-benefit scenarios to determine the optimal mix of projects that maximize business objectives while minimizing R&D Expense. Next, constraints such as; R&D budgets, resources, technical/business risks, project dependencies and funding sources are added into the simulation model in order to find the optimal portfolio mix that maximize the business objectives given the constraints placed on the product line or business unit.

Voice-of-the-Customer (VOC)

Another critical application of decisionAccelerator is VOC (voice-of-the-customer); a method that helps development teams quickly gather customer requirements, understand the customer’s intentions, and use them to specify a product before designing it.

The genesis for VOC process originated in our best practice research in which teams were observed developing the right-product (on time) through a process of customer engagement early during product definition and then continuously refining requirements throughout the product development life cycle. Instead of fixing requirements, these successful teams kept the product requirements definition fluid and changing which seemed in-congruent with fast cycle time projects. Yet these teams made it work and the VOC process embodies this seemingly contradictory dynamic. These “right product” success stories resulted in higher profits and long term customer satisfaction