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2006 Product Development and R&D MVP Award: Finalist Terry Vance

Terry Vance, a former Program Manager with ADC Telecommunications, was a finalist for the 2006 Management Roundtable Product Development and R&D MVP Awards, an annual event recognizing excellence in managing product development. Finalists participated in structured interviews regarding their company's processes and measures. The interview discusses the role of leadership, the composition of teams, and the challenges of a world-class development organization. 

 1. Please describe how the R&D/NPD process is viewed  and measured in your organization? How are R&D/NPD efforts linked to corporate strategy and success? How has this played a role in what you have been able to achieve? How did you measure the success of your specific project(s)?

The NPD process is viewed in a very positive light and as critical to the success of the development organizations. The ADC NPD (called Product Development Process [PDP] Framework) process is a phase gate process with projects assessed at the completion of each phase against business objectives and required deliverables for that phase.  Each project has the deliverables designated from the process list at the beginning of the project by the project team.  This flexibility allows each project to be structured specifically around its real needs (new product, product enhancement, cost reduction, etc).  The PDP performance is measure via the schedule metric which is the percentage of project phases each quarter that are completed on schedule for the business unit.  All of this has given ADC the ability to repetitively develop successful products.  This doesn’t keep us from having failures but it has eliminated the risks associated with the development process itself.

The NPD efforts are linked to the corporate strategy through an annual review of corporate strategy, validation of development plans against the strategy, and the planning of R&D budgets.  These budgets are based on the effort required to develop the deliverables required in each phase of the PDP Framework for those specific projects.  Business unit success is seen as good management (GM and down).  Business unit failure was seen as the failure of product development which was seen as a lack of discipline with no clear and documented PDP.  Since the development of business unit PDPs based on the ADC PDP Framework (key initiative described below), failure is no longer linked to the PDP.

Due to the above linkage I was seen as the staff member to lead the Product Development Effectiveness initiative under the direction of the CTO.  This initiative developed product development metrics, product development performance assessment capability, product management role (job) descriptions, and more across all of the business units within ADC.  Consequently, when I met with the business unit leaders, they knew that what ever we did would be clearly scoped and done collaboratively.  This expedited the implementation of each effort and helped reduce resistance to change.

We measured the success of each initiative by how it impacted the business unit culture and performance. The implementation of the product development metrics rapidly changed development performance which was usually reflected in the metrics within 6 months.  The product development performance assessments found the areas requiring improvement within each business unit.  These areas would be reassessed in follow up actions with positive results.  The culture of the development organizations shifted to a higher level of organizational maturity.  Based on these efforts the corporation benefited thru rapid growth and exceeding its growth goals.  As a result it was recognized as the winner of the 2006 American Business Awards Stevie Award for “Best Business Turn Around”.

2. You have described yourself as being responsible for the establishment and leadership of the corporate Product Development Effectiveness team.  Please explain your leadership role in addressing the new product development performance process across the international business units of ADC Telecommunications, the issues that you addressed, the specific steps/tools/practices introduced, and the accomplishments achieved.

The objective was to develop a Product Development Process that would be adopted across all 13 of the business units located around the world within the corporation.  In my judgment this initiative had to be a collaborative one with a limited scope to maximize the probability of participation and adoption by each of the business units.  Each business unit must feel they have ownership and see value in the final product otherwise they would not be able sell their team on adoption.

My leadership role included outlining the objectives with the CTO and CEO with his senior staff, the solicitation of team members from each business unit leader, establishment of relationships with each team member in one on one calls concerning objectives, establishment of the scope of the effort with the team, development of an implementation plan, scheduling international conference calls, distributing the call agendas in advance, facilitating & leading the calls, making sure action items were capture for each call, following up on the action items, insuring there was input from all participants, following up with those that missed the conference calls, spreading the responsibility for action items, and taking on my share of the action items.  In addition, I provided status updates to the CTO as well as the CEO and his staff.

The challenging issues we addressed were the different needs of the business units (predominantly hardware vs software-only development organizations, mechanical vs electronic developments, large staff vs small staff, and start up vs mature organizations/product lines) and continued commitment (i.e. participation) by the business units.  I addressed the different needs by structuring the PDP Framework to be flexible.  This was done by determining what was required for the largest and most complex development projects and then allowing the project teams to select deliverables and even phases that are required for each project on a project by project basis.  Consequently we created a menu of deliverables within the development phases as well as a vocabulary of terminology within the corporation.  To make it even more acceptable in a corporation that had a culture of independence between business units, we called the new PDP a framework.  We described it as the framing that each business unit would build from to develop their own independent and detailed PDPs.  To get and keep the commitment of participation by the business units, the scope had to be limited to a high level process with three key deliverables.  These deliverables were to be a definitions document, select templates, and a training presentation.  Another challenge was to keep the work at a high level.  Inevitably during the discussion, we would find ourselves getting into detailed requirements.  My challenge was removing these details from our work while reassuring the contributing team member(s) of their importance but conflict with our scope.

The specific steps/tools/practices introduced included a phase gate development process with common names and definitions of phases, deliverables, and releases.  The bulk of the work was getting team agreement on the definitions of the phases, deliverables and releases.  To get it started, I wrote the draft version of the definitions document then led the team discussion through each definition encouraging input from each team member and keeping them focused on the overall objective.  This required assignments of rework by various team members on sections of the document for the next conference call.  Once there was agreement on the first 10 to 15 definitions the team began to work more collaboratively and the pace of agreement accelerated.  As we were closing in on completion, I got volunteers to draft or provide templates for what we considered the critical deliverables.  As we finished the definitions document we turned to the templates and got agreement on them.  I then developed the training presentation and got team agreement on it.  These three deliverables (definitions document, templates, and training presentation) were summarized and presented to the CEO and his staff.  During this presentation it was emphasized there was team agreement and that their endorsement was critical to the success of the effort.  Once they saw the work and were assured there was team agreement they endorsed the PDP Framework as defined.

The accomplishments achieved were not only agreement by the team and endorsement by the CEO and his staff, but the adoption of the PDP Framework by the various business units.  The level of immediate adoption varied across the business units.  However, the PDP Framework has been the guiding objective as the business units have modified their PDPs since.

3. What motivated and inspired you to drive these particular initiatives?

The corporation experienced the consequence of no clear development process, no common language for cross business unit development status, and inconsistent product development performance across business units.  I had successfully led the development of a product development process for our business unit. Consequently the CTO asked me to lead this same effort across all business units within ADC.  I accepted as I saw it as an opportunity to teach those around me what I had learned through many years of leading the development of numerous, complex, large product developments; as an opportunity to contribute to the success of the corporation at a higher level; and as a challenge that I believed I could achieve and achieve more rapidly than most.

4. Since product development is a team sport, please tell us what the team was like and why it succeeded. Who were the key players? Did you add/delete team members along the way?

The team was made up of product line managers and engineering managers that were over committed with tactical challenges within their business units.  At the same time they were motivated because they had experienced the pain of poor product development performance and were seeking a better way to implement their product developments.  I wanted two team members from each business unit to maximize the probability of participation by each business unit and to minimize the impact upon any one individual. While this increased the number of team members and it is generally known that the larger the number the lower the probability of success, it was seen as a risk worth taking.  This placed more burden upon me to insure collaboration and communication between team members.  I believe it succeeded because as each team member became convinced the effort had a high probability of being successful they also became aware of how critical their input was in order to have any influence upon how they would be running their development programs going forward.

The key players were the larger business units and the start up organizations.  They were the ones the rest of the team looked to for acceptance.  If these key players accepted, it was seen as very difficult to argue against adoption by their own organization.

There were changes to team membership over the 9 month PDP Framework development effort due to skill set alignment, employee turn over, and reorganizations.  The skill set alignment issues were resolved early on between the business unit leadership, the team member, and me.  The others occurred randomly throughout the development time frame.  I would make sure each new member was spun up on the objective, scope, progress made to date, and importance of their input.

5. How did you go about building organizational support for your program?  What was your biggest challenge in doing this?  What was your biggest success?  What were the major lessons learned?

The CEO and his staff endorsed the program because of the need to accelerate & increase the success rate of product developments.  The CTO was the executive champion. I used the endorsement of the senior staff and authority of the CTO along with the limited scope (i.e. we are not working on world peace) and motivation to do things better and easier to build support with the business unit leaders and team members. The biggest challenge was the work load of the team members with their business unit challenges.  The biggest success was getting team agreement on the definitions document for the PDP Framework (see above for more detail).  The major lessons learned were: (A) Support must come from the top down and the bottom up to accomplish a process change across numerous organizational boundaries; (B) The objective must be clear; (C) The scope must be limited (not an interminable commitment by team members); (D) Collaboration must be driven by the team leader through solicited involvement of all team members; and (E) The team members must have had negative experiences that motivate them to seek out better ways to accomplish their goals.

6. What obstacles stood in your way and what did you do to overcome them?

The greatest obstacle was keeping the effort a priority with each of the team members as touched on above. This required several levels of communication with the team members.  This included the international conference calls, action item and status updates via email, direct one on one voice communications concerning follow-ups, and meetings with the team members and their management as often as reasonably possible.  This was my personal priority concerning this initiative because of its criticality to the success of the initiative.  At times this required me to get the team member’s manager to work with us to change the team member’s priorities to allow them to participate in specific meetings or deliverables.

Another obstacle was disagreement on specific definitions.  If I was unable to resolve the disagreement during the conference call, I would follow up with a one on one call to get to the root cause of the disagreement with the team members in disagreement.  If this wasn’t successful, I would see if we could eliminate any reference to this issue in the definition.  At times the definition was quite genericized.

7. What are you most proud of?  What do you feel has contributed the most value to your organization?

The effort described in questions 2 – 6 was the PDP Framework development initiative.  Other initiatives included the development of product development performance metrics, a product development performance assessment capability, product management role definitions, and more.  What I’m most proud of is the positive change in the overall product development culture within ADC.  The bottom line has been an increased level of product development discipline with rigorous development processes in place across all business units moving the corporation maturity level from a Process Level 2 to a Level 4 (Level 2 = informal, decentralized, easily circumvented PDP; Level 4 = one visible, documented, adaptable, formal PDP). This required overcoming business unit short-term priorities and NIH factors.  I personally feel my ability to obtain collaboration across organizationally and technically diverse teams has been a key component of this success.  After the completion of this effort and adoption by the business units, the new product revenue increased from 24% to 46% of total sales (>$1B).

8. What are your next steps (i.e. will you be building on your earlier efforts, or are you now tackling new challenges?)

With the increase in product development discipline and maturity, the areas of interest for next steps include the development of portfolio processes and tools, ways to increase innovation, and methodologies for increasing design for modularity.  These may be combinations of internal & external development and incorporation of external tools.

Increasing the level of innovation across the corporation can include the adoption of innovation management tools, the implementation of problem solving methodologies (presently teaching an overview course in TRIZ), and the utilization of external resources to train the organization in ideation techniques.  All of this will build on the earlier efforts.