1. 1 | P a g e
ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET
(to be completed by the student)
AIB student ID number: A001324224
Student name: K.B.Krishan Priyanga
Course name: Master of Business Administration - Generic
Subject name: New Product management
Subject facilitator: Mr. Riaz Hassen
Teaching Centre: Oxford College of Business
No. of pages: 18
Word count: 1863
DECLARATION
I, the above named student, confirm that by submitting, or causing the attached assignment to be
submitted, to AIB, I have not plagiarised any other person’s work in this assignment and except
where appropriately acknowledged, this assignment is my own work, has been expressed in my own
words, and has not previously been submitted for assessment.

2. 2 | P a g e
ASSESSMENT SHEET
(to be completed by the examiner)
Student name:
Course name:
Subject name:
Assessor/marker:
COMMENTS
Principles learnt (for example, number and understanding of principles referred to, their influence on the structure of this paper,
number and correct citations of references, use of appropriate jargon)
/4
Application of principles. That is, the analysis and evaluation of the example problem based on the principles,
including the final recommendations and their justification
/8
How well the example problem was described, including the extent and depth of information (including the
data) about it that was accessed
/4
Structure and presentation
/2
Style, grammar and language
/2
Total
Less penalties
GRAND TOTAL /20
General comments
FOR MODERATOR’S USE ONLY
I agree with the assessor’s assessment
I disagree with the assessor’s assessment and the new mark is as follows for the
following reasons:
/20
Moderator:

3. 3 | P a g e
Assignment Question
Option 1 (a)
Investigate the company’s new product development process. For example, this
might entail finding out if the company has its own detailed process; exploring
how the process is used to develop new products; comparing the company’s
approach to what the textbook says; and analysing what you have observed or
found in order to discuss possible recommendations for improvement. If there
is no clear process in evidence, you might discuss the type of process that the
company could be using;

4. 4 | P a g e
New Product Development Process
(YumTable)
of
Empite Solutions

5. 5 | P a g e
Executive summary
‘YumTable’ the new application software designed and developed by Empite
Pvt. Ltd. To market the last minute restaurant deals, offers instant call-free
bookings via mobile phone App or website as well. It was designed through the
new product development process of Empite which is consisted with
opportunity identification, opportunity selection, concept generation,
evaluation, development and launch. Although Empite follows this key process
in developing new products there are some sorts of improvements need to avoid
identified drawback. The major improvement should be done in the culture of
the organization by adopting strategies toward holistic marketing concept,
shaping well designed new product development process and by internal
auditing of the process. As it takes a period of time to reshape the new product
development process, some suggestions are presented to initialize this process
with a good foundation.

6. 6 | P a g e
Contents
Executive summary............................................................................................. 5
1.0 Introduction to Empite Pvt. Ltd. .............................................................. 7
2.0 Product discussed for development .............................................................. 7
3.0 Current new product development process & Drawbacks............................ 8
3.1 Feature list creation - Opportunity identification and opportunity
selection........................................................................................................... 9
3.2 Extracting feature list into relevant business case and update the feature
list of each business case - Opportunity selection........................................... 9
3.3 Creating detail software requirement specification (DSRS) - Concept
generation...................................................................................................... 10
3.4 Review DSRS - Concept evaluation ....................................................... 10
3.5 Effort estimation - Concept evaluation /Development............................ 11
3.6 Develop development time line - Concept evaluation /Development..... 12
3.7 Commence development - Development ................................................ 12
3.8 Develop query - Development ................................................................ 13
3.9 QA and BA testing – Launch .................................................................. 13
3.10 Update marketing division - Launch..................................................... 13
4. Recommendations for improvement............................................................. 14
Reference .......................................................................................................... 17
Appendix 1........................................................................................................ 18

7. 7 | P a g e
1.0 Introduction to Empite Pvt. Ltd.
Empite is a newly established fast growing software solution company in Sri
Lanka. Its headquarters is in Australia. They develop both client projects and
their own products and they mainly cater Australian IT solution market while
having a considerable focus on local market too. Empite’s provide four
services: web development, mobile app development, graphic designs and
responsive web designs. (Empite 2012)
Their latest innovative product is ‘YumTable’, a location based last minute
restaurant booking website and iPhone app which connect restaurant table
reservation with hungry customers.
2.0 Product discussed for development
‘YumTable’ is the main product which Empite is going to introduce to Sri
Lanka in terms of internet based restaurant booking solutions. It provides
hungry diners with last-minute restaurant deals, via both the web and mobile
apps. Because at present only the flights, tickets and hotels can be booked
online, this will be a new useful product. When considering further in detail,
restaurants can make deals based on time of day or day of the week, and
promote anything that’s important to them such as special produce, discounts,
and package deals to entice diners on slow days, free meal offers to draw diners
in early. Not only the last minute restaurant deals, but also ‘YumTable’ offers
instant call-free bookings via mobile phone app or website. Moreover
‘YumTable’ differs from available restaurant booking methods as no sign up is
required than just booking, instant SMS confirmation and no annoying coupons
are required. (YumTable 2012)

8. 8 | P a g e
3.0 Current new product development process & Drawbacks
Source: New product management 2011

9. 9 | P a g e
3.1 Feature list creation - Opportunity identification and opportunity
selection
As the initial phase of YumTable product, process business analysts, marketing
peoples, project manager, developers and QA peoples involves creating feature
list of YumTable. It is a huge list of constructive ideas, problems, complaints,
enhancements, and features good to have and should have. The feature list is a
shared document in Basecamp (a web-based project-management tool) can be
accessed by privilege peoples who are in YumTable project.
Drawbacks and shortcomings
 No proper process in identifying opportunities to cater to organizational
strategy
 No product innovation charter (PIC) in place
3.2 Extracting feature list into relevant business case and update the
feature list of each business case - Opportunity selection
The business analysts and marketing people’s priorities the items according to
their relevance to the business and product. The business case contains features,
which has a lot of features, a date added and a status, such as ‘Approved’,
‘Dropped’, ‘On hold’.
Drawbacks and shortcomings
 No Product portfolio analysis is available since the focus is solely on
the features of the main product
 The organisation as a whole, lacks the need of does not give emphasis
on market conditions, as it is not reflected in the existing process.

10. 10 | P a g e
3.3 Creating detail software requirement specification (DSRS) - Concept
generation
With the features of the all business case, DSRS is developed by Business
analysts with the somewhat of help from technical lead and UI Engineers
containing ER diagrams, use cases, user interfaces, inputs, outputs, processes,
calculations data validations, special conditions, rules and exceptions etc.
Please refer Appendix 1
Drawbacks and shortcomings
 Involvement of top management is limited only for approvals, which
does not depict a creative management culture.
 No proper identification of the problem and merely focusing on the
requirement.
 DSRS are derived more or less from requirements not focusing on
results or results this may cause unnecessary coding effort duplicate
work.
 No marketing involvement in order to identify properly the problem or
end result.
 No method of identifying tradeoffs.
3.4 Review DSRS - Concept evaluation
Initially DSRS is reviewed by project manager and tech lead and change or
alter the DSRS to fit market needs, after that general manager reviewed it and
end results after that all parties involved must approve the document.
Drawbacks and shortcomings

11. 11 | P a g e
 No sales forecast conducted to understand the revenue from the new
product and expected profit duration since the pricing is done based on
market trends, such inputs are not looked at in this process
 Only a technical evaluation is done and marketing feasibility and
market acceptance are not addressed.
 No risks identified
 No proper method of identifying product limitations
 There is no marketing division involvement therefore the end user
impression is not evaluated since Concept testing is done on the
feasibility and not tested on market conditions to check the product
acceptance by potential target market segments
3.5 Effort estimation - Concept evaluation /Development
The approved DSRS are sent to each Team Lead(s) and QA Lead in this
projects and according to the business case of the DSRS and subsequently
manday efforts are generated and initially sent for approval to project manager
and there after the top management
Drawbacks and shortcomings
 Effort estimation is merely to identify resource utilisation. Cost
identification is done through the resource allocation. However there is
no proper model of financial analysis of the concept/project

12. 12 | P a g e
3.6 Develop development time line - Concept evaluation /Development
Thus, a team will meet periodically (at the end of each quarter) and prioritise,
schedule resources to each business case. Sometimes business cases are broken
into phase wise implementations.
Drawbacks and shortcomings
 Development timeline does not seek approval from the marketing
division as time to market is vital for a new product and deadlines must
be communicated from marketing division and be agreed upon prior to
finalising the development plan
3.7 Commence development - Development
Once the above activity is finalised the Team Lead(s) concerned will allocate
developers to set of business cases in DSRS and according to the development
plan and commence development. During developers develop the system QA
people prepare test cases to test the system. Project manager always involve to
record the progress of each development, while the business case will be used
for the design and coding.
Drawbacks and shortcomings
 There is no provision for project teams to develop new products that are
new to the organisation.
 Once again, there is no involvement of the marketing division when
new to the orgainsation products are developed.
 No impact of developmental changes in the marketing plan

13. 13 | P a g e
3.8 Develop query - Development
All the problems that are arises during development are tracked and are lodged
into a separate task in JIRA (a proprietary issue tracking product used for bug
tracking, issue tracking and project management.) and prioratised as ‘Show
stopper’, ‘blocker’ , ‘Critical’ , ‘Minor’ Please refer Appendix 1
Drawbacks and shortcomings
 Tests and quires do not involve the marketing division
3.9 QA and BA testing – Launch
Send the product for QA testing where all the test cases are checked and all
‘bugs’ reported back to development and re-done/ rectified/ fixed. All such
instance information is recorded in JIRA.
Drawbacks and shortcomings
 Only technical testing is done, although end user testing is represented
by BA testing BA involvement is late in the process and the
competency of the BA team to test new to the organisation products are
doubtful
3.10 Update marketing division - Launch
All developed and QA peoples verified as a bug free system, thereafter it is
informed of the marketing division. Thereafter marketing division starts their
marketing campaign to attract the restaurant and the customers using all media

14. 14 | P a g e
channels such as printed media, social media etc. Also, they have launched
some promotional campaign.
4. Recommendations for improvement
Recommendations majorly for the above identified drawbacks are concerned as
a requirement for establishing/improving the new product development process
of YumTable. Thus, several transformations must take place and this chapter
will present some recommendations heading to those transformations. Out of
these the most important transformation immerges is the cultural
transformation.
1. The holistic marketing driven culture should be adopted by the entire
organization
2. A well designed new product development process needs to be
established and should be followed step by step to ensure the
organization’s growth and sustainability and not to miss important
points which may reduce quality of new product management.
3. The new product development process must be evaluated by the internal
audit in terms of Key performance indicators (KPI’s) and thereafter the
board of directors should be provided with feedback and areas of
deviations and areas for improvement.
Due to the fact that organization’s culture, neither be developed nor be changed
in one night, the transformations need to be adopted through a time set process.
Thus the first step towards improved new product development process covered
by nourishing and supporting culture can be expressed as follows.

15. 15 | P a g e
1. The strategic opportunities are more or less market driven. Thus the
establishment of a clear avenue for strategic and non-strategic opportunity
identification is with a high priority.
2. Identifying marketing trends in food and beverage industry is vital in
designing an online marketing system for foods in restaurants. Not only for the
purpose of developing ‘YumTable’ but also for other software solutions,
identifying the customers’ interaction with marketing methods is important.
Establishments of a separate dedicated research and development team and
marketing team, which looks into the aspects of identifying and developing
new to the world products, new to the organisation products, new modules and
make decisions on removing outdated modules will assist in our coming more
attractive and successful products.
This team should have the following competencies, areas of expertise and
rewards schemes:
 ‘Fresh thinkers’ and free from organisational bonds
 Awareness of markets, market trends and corporate buyer behaviour
 Ability to identify and communicate with different stakeholders
 Risk identification, risk mitigation and risk assessment capabilities
 A separate performance evaluation to be set and evaluated using 360
degree evaluation techniques
 Separate reward schemes to be introduced to this team.
3. Concept testing can be done by using a sample of existing clients of similar
market segment and similar industry to the community which products targeted.
It will output great benefits especially if the market is known. Also full client
consent and non-disclosure agreements should be established for this project.

16. 16 | P a g e
4. Because ‘YumTable’ is almost created, adequate products and market
research firm can be recommended to for product testing, as forming a sound
research team takes time.
5. A standard product protocol template should be finalized and followings
should be included:
 Product user guide
 Configuration guides
 System requirement specifications
 System architecture document
 System data flow diagram.
6. To enhance effectiveness of concept evaluation a comprehensive scoring
model should be introduced taking into account the technical accomplishment
and the commercial accomplishment of the product. The new team should
come up with the variables for analysis (Crawford & Benedetto 2011)
7. Financial analysis for new products should be included in the financial
divisions’ job descriptions, to the new team, which is to be formed and two
other teams involved in product development
8. The pricing strategy for new products should be based on both the cost of
marketing inputs and the market conditions. However in a case of having
ability to obtain monopoly power pricing on margins added to the costs can be
practiced.

17. 17 | P a g e
Reference
Clow, K E & Back, D 2007, Integrated Advertising Promotion and Marketing
Communications, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Crawford, M & Di Benedetto, A 2011, New Products Management, McGraw Hill,
New York.
Dessler G. 2008 ‘human resource management’, Prentice Hall, India.
Home, Empite Pvt Ltd. web site viewed 12th April 2014, retrieved from
http://www.empite.com/
Is Your Firm Ready for the Millennials? n.d., viewed 20 April 2014.
http://knowledge.emory.edu/article.cfm?articleid=950
Kotler, P et al 2009, Marketing Management an Asian Perspective, Prentice Hall,
London.
Noe, RA, Hollenbeck, JR, Gerhart, B and Wright PM 2013, Human Resources
Management – Gaining a Competitive Advantage, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New
York.

18. 18 | P a g e
Appendix 1
DSRS
A requirements specification for a software arrangement, is a perfect
description of the doings of a system to be originated and may include a set of
usage cases that describe interactions the users will have with the software.
Use case
A list of steps, typically defining interactions between a role and a system, to
achieve a goal. The actor can be a human or an external organization.
Test case
A set of conditions or variables under which a tester will determine whether
a software system or one of its features is working as it was originally
established for it to do.
Problems getting up during development
Show stopper
The entire development is halted unless this questioner is solved immediate
response is required to avoid delays (Response time 0-6 hours from query)
Blocker
Development of specific requirement is halted unless this questioner is solved
immediate response is required to avoid delays (0-8 hours from query)
Critical
Development is not affected, however immediate response is required to avoid
delays (0-2 days from query)
Minor
Immediate response is required (0- 4 days from query)