It's very difficult to predict a new product's ultimate success or failure during its conception and development. Consequently, a product's ultimate fate as painted by the market place happens to be the only measure of the product development process. The intent of this process is to translate real user needs into products, and the products, in turn, must provide real benefits to users.

The recurring development of successful new products (i.e. those, which achieve the business goals) is the lifeblood of any prosperous company, but unfortunately there are too many studies that reveal an extremely large failure rate of new product development programs (failure to achieve business goals).¹

Compounding the situation is the fact that products are becoming more and more constrained by a kind of '3^rd party rule of law' imposed by regulatory agencies, environmental laws, liability requirements and intellectual property protection and defenses issues. Such constraints command a large part of a product's development effort and have forced product cost to become quite dependent on them. This further exacerbates the unpredictability of a product's success.

This article outlines a methodology called Good Product Engineering Practices, or GPEP, which will help a product developer to provide an optimum a priori predictability of product success during the product development stages. But, first we must understand exactly what product development is and where GPEP fits.

"GPEP is an attitude, a process and a discipline used to help move a product from vision to profitability."