The domain of Market Development/Product Conception embodies the business, market, user and product issues such as product ideation, user research, investigation of market segmenting and positioning, sales and distribution channel issues, pricing structures and the preliminary business case development. This domain of product development is extensively deliberated in many books and articles², which research and discuss techniques used by major 'best practices' companies to help secure a new product's market success. In this stage the 'Bible' for the product is begun; this Marketing Requirements Document (MRD) contains everything you will know about the product, its development, market, production, support and end-of-life. Note that the marketing influence carries well into the product engineering stages and the MRD is the progenitor for all subsequent development activities.

This article mostly covers the Product Engineering domain, and the role it plays in assuring product success. There will be some discussion of the marketing and production phases (Figure 1), which are pertinent to the product engineering effort. Good engineering practices, to be developed herein, are used in the Product Engineering domain in conjunction with the various new product development techniques previously referenced to further reduce uncertainty of product success.

It is in this stage that the Product Requirements Specification (PRS) is developed; this 'technical Bible' contains every technical requirement you must know about the product design, its implementation, regulatory issues, manufacturing, testing, etc.

The Production & Support domain includes the activities of manufacturer selection & liaison, final product validation, production development and support, procurement, sales, distribution and channel support, service, cost-reduction, product improvement, etc.

Notice that there is a Product End-Of-Life stage, which stems from various 2005/2006/2007 international laws, policies and standards coming into effect. These requirements affect the substances in - and the recycling, reuse, reclamation and disposal of - selected product types. Managing this stage is an obligation of the entire business process.