Anyone involved in New Product Introduction (NPI) knows how critical time to market is but do they know how to quantify it?

If a product has a predicted lifecycle of x years the assumption must be made that sales will cease x years after product launch i.e at product “death”.

If the launch date is delayed by 2 months the original product “death” should remain the same. Any product will only be viable until its successor is released by its originator or the competition. The result is a loss of 2 months of sales which will have a real monetary value. This is a perfectly reasonable proposition as there is no logic in assuming that the competitors next product will be late just because yours is !

This enables us to quantify project delays in terms of real dollars. Great news for Senior Management but also good news for the project manager as it allows us to justify additional project resource or equipment in order to meet the original project timescales.

Remember – if your Senior Management has not provided the resource you budgeted for to bring the project in on time quantifying time to market losses in monetary terms is a great leveraging tool.