It's Time To Revisit PPM For Product Development

Research and development (R&D) pipelines are the innovation and financial lifeblood of many organizations, yet product development executives report ongoing challenges prioritizing their investments in R&D projects and the resulting products. Recently, however, Forrester has been seeing a significant increase in interest and investment in project portfolio management (PPM) tools for product development to help address two persistent information challenges: 1) obtaining an accurate picture of resource utilization, and 2) aligning investment with the business strategy. Recognizing the market potential, vendors from familiar partners in the enterprise resource planning (ERP), IT PPM, and product life-cycle management (PLM) domains as well as heritage pure plays and innovative startups are investing in solutions to meet the unique needs of managing R&D pipelines by increasing support for product and technology strategy and product-line engineering processes. When evaluating PPM for product development options across the various vendor segments, be sure to look at characteristics beyond functional fit and consider criteria including integration, product strategy, flexibility, and cost in your selection process.