Develop new products and services

Project managers are essential to ensure the successful development of new products or services. They'll be responsible forcontrolling costs and allocating resources - for further information, see the page in this guide on investment and cost control,drawing up the key parameters for the product or service's specification co-ordinating the product development team - for further information, see the page in this guide on creating a project team ,timetabling the development process ,troubleshooting .

Timetabling the development process:Your project manager should draw up a critical path for the completion of key tasks. SMART (specific, measurable, agreed, realistic and time-limited) objectives can help to control and co-ordinate the development team's advance along this path and stages can be used to monitor progress.

However, flexibility must be built into your plans. Any number of unknowns can come into play and result in, for example, a change in the project's specifications or expected completion date.For further information on managing your development project, see our guide on how to manage your research, design and development. The speed with which you want to establish your product or service.The expected lifecycle of your product or service.Whether you are covering your costs.

There are two main ways to estimate costs:a top-down approach where you consider previous comparable projects and use them as a benchmark,a bottom-up approach where all team members agree the costs they expect to incur with one project manager, who will then estimate the total cost,Remember that your costs could include staffing, materials, technology, product design, market research, prototyping and incremental overhead costs.