First… What the heck is Product Development anyway?

Well, from the business point-of-view, PD is a manageable, information driven process through which a marketplace ultimately rewards innovation¹.

Whereas, from the operational point-of-view, PD is information-driven planning and execution for creating, defining, funding, developing, validating, reproducing, promoting, supporting and managing an innovation within a marketplace at an acceptable price-profit point within an acceptable time frame.

'Information-driven' means that the PD process is continuously plied with a dynamic, up-to-date information stream throughout its duration as describe below.

But, from any viewpoint PD is like any other process; if you don't understand it or have control of it then the output is basically uncontrollable and subsequently unpredictable!

The basic PD process is an execution of sub-processes (or activities) that starts with IDEATION (formation of product ideas) and goes through VALIDATION (confirmation that the product, based in those ideas, was developed as required); see the figure below. The input to the PD process is continuous information flowing from six basic Wells-Of-Enlightenment sources (WOEs - for lack of a better term), from which operational clarification and experience are gathered. The output of the PD process is the actual product to the market and resulting reward from the market.

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¹ Where Does Innovation Fit Within Product Development? By Dick Haney