"Before embarking on a product development project, a total assessment of a product's expected life cycle should be examined to decide how to apportion 'limited' funds and time to the various development project activities in order to get the most 'development bang for the buck'." Richard M. (Dick) Haney, principal of the CMT Group, a technology consulting company in Palo Alto, CA., specializes in product engineering, manufacturing and technical management consulting..

This two-section article outlines a top-down, cost-driven methodology for setting up and monitoring a high technology product development project throughout its life cycle. This article assumes a product has been defined and its market has been established.

The methodology described in Section I emphasizes the importance of costs (such as non-recurring development costs and recurring production and support costs) incurred during a product's life cycle and their effects on business profit. This top-down, cost consideration allows one to objectively establish the relative importance of each phase of the project and to properly apportion the project funding.

Section II discusses project anchors. These are ubiquitous project entities that provide visibility into, and controls for, a development project. If any of the anchors are altered during product development, the project and thus the product outcome may be positively or negatively changed. Undetected changes in these anchors are usually the progenitors of project surprises - just what every project manager hates to encounter.