The Expert's Panel

I would like to think that the MRS (Market Requirement Statement) is tied in to that. In developing the MRS you have already had a good interface with your customer, or proposed customer, base. If you are spending money to develop this product, it should have been defined by the MRS and the market should have been clearly identified�what is the market; what is the bandwidth of the customers; what are they willing to pay for it. It is part of the MRS and the product development should not be undertaken without it.

A mistake that a lot of people make is looking at data from similar products and applying it to their new product. You see a Dataquest report that says left-handed whizbangs sold X amount last year. We take the data and apply it to our right-handed whizbang. These are leaps of data that just don�t fit. You have to talk to customers, one-by-one, on the new products or product changes and read between the lines of their comments.