Market Pull Signals and Time-To-Market

How much does customer demand for new products drive your development process? The answer will tell you how important time-to-market is relative to other indicators of product development performance.

"Market pull" is an indicator of customer demand for new products. An effective product development organization times its product releases to synchronize with market pull signals.

Some products have very strong pull signals - such as any product that sells best in the summer or at Christmas. A successful company in such a market will have already figured out how to deliver products on time to meet that market window. Others have only weak signals, such as mature products with long lifespans of five years or more. In those markets, product developers may choose to invest extra resources into lowering product costs or adding more features than rushing to market with a product that is only a marginal improvement over an existing product.

Depending on the nature of the pull signal, speeding up time to market may or may not have any impact on the product's return on investment. If it doesn't, then you will need other measures to translate increased R & D productivity into business results, such as number of new products released, lower warranty cost or cost to manufacture. If you insist upon an effort to reduce time-to-market in such an environment, don't be surprised if the product development teams display disinterest.