Traditional development projects typically get kicked off by writing a lengthy Product Requirements Document (PRD) and then passing it to R&D for review and scoping. The expectation is that the product is fully defined based on extensive customer and market research. The reality is that it’s impossible to exactly define a product since customers can’t provide real input until they see something and R&D can’t tell you what’s possible until they dive in.
Agile fixes these problems – even for hardware. With an agile project kickoff, the team acknowledges up front that the product will not be defined by detailed requirements, but rather a set of customer and product goals in the form of user stories and attributes. The real product will get defined and refined as the team works through the agile process. To kickoff an agile hardware project, a good tool to use is the Agile Product Brief that defines customer and market goals. To learn more about the Modified Agile for Hardware Development Framework and see an example of an Agile Product Brief, download Step 1 of our 9-Step MAHD Journey.
