Identify Customer Needs
This first stage of product development is required to capture both the technical and commercial goals of the project.
This stage is interactive and requires a high level of communication and participation on behalf of PDE and the client. The results of this phase is a document known as the Design Brief that contains carefully constructed customer need statements, organized in a hierarchical list with importance weightings for each need.
The design brief also contains the following information:
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Description of the product, including key customer benefits.
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Key business goals, including introduction timing, market share and desired financial performance.
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Target markets for the product.
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Assumptions that may constrain the development effort.
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Stakeholders and their requirements that need to be included or considered in the development process.