Well, Apples Product development Process may be one of the most successful

design process ever implemented. With the company verging on becoming the
worlds first $1 trillion business organization theres a lot that designers can
learn from Apple and introduce into their own design environments.

Apple is a notoriously secretive business. In Steve Jobs time at the company it

would have been near impossible to find out about the internal workings of the
business. This isnt surprising when a businesss market advantage is its design
approach. Its worth keeping it under wraps.

However, Adam Lashinsky, the author of Inside Apple: How Americas most
Admired and Secretive Company Really Works has been given a look at the
process. While there are still aspects of the way that Apple works that are
shrouded in secrecy you can get a good idea of the overall high level process.

Apples Product Development Process

Design is at the Forefront

How do you give designers the freedom to design and ensure that the products
they product fulfill their visions? Well at Apple they put design at the forefront.

Jony Ive the British designer that is the Chief Design Officer (CDO) at Apple
and his design team lead the company and they do not report to finance,
manufacturing, etc. They are given free rein to set their own budgets and are
given the ability to ignore manufacturing practicalities.

At the heart of the design department is the Industrial Design Studio where only
a select few Apple employees have access.

Its a simple concept that allows for the creation of incredible products.

Design Teams are Separated From the Larger Company

When a design team works on a new product they are then cut off from the rest
of the Apple business. They may even implement physical controls to prevent the
team from interacting with other Apple employees during the day.

The team is also removed from the traditional Apple hierarchy at this point. They
create their own reporting structures

and report directly to the executive team. This leaves them free to focus on
design rather than day-to-day minutiae.

A Documented Development Process

The Apple New Product Process (ANPP) information is given to a product
development team when they begin work. It details every stage of the design
process and it goes into elaborate detail. The idea is to define what stages the
product creation team will go through, who will be responsible for delivering the
final product, who works on which stage and where they work and also when the
product is expected to be completed.

Monday is Review Day

The Apple Executive Team holds a regular Monday meeting to examine every
single product that the company has in design phase at that point in time. This
isnt as daunting as it may sound; one of the keys to Apples success is that they
dont work on hundreds of new products at once. Instead, resources are
concentrated on a handful of projects that are expected to bear fruit rather than
being diluted over many lesser projects.

If a product cannot be reviewed at one meeting its automatically at the top of

the agenda for the next meeting. In practice, this should mean that every single
Apple product is inspected by the executive team at least once a fortnight. This
keeps delays in decision making to a minimum and enables the company to be
very lean with its approach to design.

The EPM and the GSM

The EPM is the engineering program manager and the GSM is the global supply
manager. Together they are known within Apple as the EPM Mafia. Its their job
to take over when a product moves from design to production.

As you might expect, these people are usually going to be found in China, Apple
does very little of its own manufacturing. Instead it relies on contract
outsourcing companies like Foxconn (one of the largest employers in the world)
to do this for them. This removes much of the headache of manufacturing for
Apple whilst keeping production costs as low as possible. There is a significant
market advantage to this approach and its one that many other electronics
manufacturers are emulating now.

The EPM Mafia may sound scary (and they probably are to the suppliers) but
their real job is simply to ensure that products are delivered to market in the
right way, at the right time and at the right cost. They may disagree at points but
their guiding principle is to act in the interests of the product at all times.

Iteration Is Key

Like any good design company, the design process at Apple is not over when
manufacturing begins. In fact, Apple iterates the design throughout
manufacturing. The product is built, its tested and reviewed, then the design
team improves on it and its built all over again. These cycles take 4-6 weeks at a
time and may be run many times over a products development lifecycle.
When production is complete the EPM will take possession of some or all of the
test devices and then take them back to Apples headquarters at Cupertino.

This is a very costly approach but its one of the reasons that Apple has a
reputation for quality. The more you invest in design, the more likely you are to
build incredible market changing products. Its the process that the iPod, the
iPhone and the iPad went through.

The Packaging Room

This is a very-high security area in Apple and its where prototypes are unboxed.
As you might expect, the security is to prevent leaks to the outside world. If you
ever do see a leaked prototype for an Apple product it wont have come from
here. Its more likely to have vanished from a production line in China.

A Launch Plan

The final step in Apples product development is product launch. When the
product is considered to be as good as it can be it enters an action plan known
as the Rules of the Road. This explains all the responsibilities and actions that
must be taken prior to a commercial launch of the product.

It must be a nerve-wracking experience to be privy to the Rules of the Road

because if you lose it or leak it youre immediately fired. This is explained in the
document itself.

The Take Away

Apples process is complex, expensive and demanding. If you compare it to most

business theories it shouldnt work. However, to date it has out-performed
even the wildest of expectations.

You may not be able to emulate all of their processes within the space of your
own workplace but theres no reason that you cant develop written processes
for design phases and launch phases of your projects, for example. And, of
course, there is no reason at all for you in not iterating!

And finally, the more you know about successful design processes, the more you
can take some of the best aspects of them and use them to enhance your own
products.
Did you know that by the end of October 2014, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were
available in 69 countries and territories, with a total of 115 countries planned by
the end of the 2014? Thats not the only amazing fact. Did you also know that the
iPhone is the same design regardless of region?

Apple did not customize their phone in terms of features and looks. So you might
think Apple is taking the concept of global to the purist level, using a one size
fits-all approach, with a standardized design across all regions, the same range of
products for all countries, and no visible customization also called localization
except for the power source, pricing, and carriers specifics.

There are certain benefits to standardization, and this one in particular:

establishing a global brand with a strong identity, worked for Apple. However,
what about raising the idea that the standardization of Apple products may in
fact precisely answer the requirement for cultural understanding?

The secret of any global brand success is cultural understanding The secret of
any global brand success is cultural understanding. What if Apple has
understood the underlying common-ness of all humans so that no-need for
product customization is actually the highest form of cultural understanding? Or,
what if Apple has found the path to that sweet-spot, where there is a common
ground among differing cultures?

The thing is, going global is not just about offering a product to several markets
around the world. Its also about finding the denominator for a particular
product that is region-blind. Apple, I believe, found this baseline purist often
called minimalist approach with expansive usability testing. Steve Jobs said,
The main thing in our design is that we have to make things intuitively obvious.

However, Apple concedes to personalization on several layers. Lets examine

what those are:

Apple has stores all around the world. For each of these stores, Apple follows a
strict customer service protocol, which is tailored to each region. That creates
insane loyalty and attachment, because the local staff uses a personalized
approach to communicate with customers.

Even the type of building matches the culture. For example, the Paris Apple Store
is housed in a Haussmann-type building that is ideally suited to Parisians tastes
in architecture. Or at least, what they have grown accustomed to. Bob Bridger,
vice president of Apple Retail Development explains what makes Apple Stores so
popular. Once a location is picked, its all a matter of working towards making
sure the store has an inviting appeal that matches its surrounding culture and
environment. Its about getting out into the street and feeling what the local
feels.

Second of all, Apple chooses the countries where they are going to do business
carefully. In fact for the first time in iPhone history, Apple phones will be on
track to be available in more than 115 countries by the end of the year 2014,
making this the largest iPhone rollout ever. Talk about localization! Apple may
use a one size-fits-all strategy for their products, but that strategy allows them to
launch in so many countries because they have minimal customization to subject
their phones to. But the area in which they choose personalization is their
technical local requirements.

The new iPhone 6 supports anywhere between 16 and 20 different LTE (long-
term evolution) bands, depending on the model which is the highest of any
phone being currently sold. That means you can use your US-bought iPhone 6 all
over Europe and Asia with fast download speeds. That is the epitome of a global
experience tailored to the regional standards, isnt it?

Third, the Apple ecommerce web site is also purist and standard across all 125
world regions that the sites it is translated into, and is a mirror of the brand. It
has the same look and feel, regardless of the country you are viewing the site in,
but the content is highly customized in the local language, trans-created, or
reviewed by local copywriters. You find that same high translation quality in all
of Apple user guides and documentation, even though Apples user-friendly
design approach makes the use of guides somewhat obsolete.

Did you know that Apple isnt on social media? In fact, Apple customers
constitute Apples advertising Apple isnt even involved.

Customers adapt to Apple, Apple does not adapt to customers How and where do
they get their customer pulse? By being silent. They let others do all the talking
for them. Maybe that seeming lack of social marketing strategy is, in fact, the
strategy. Customers come to Apple. Apple creates the want and solidifies the
brand in that way. Customers adapt to Apple, Apple does not adapt to customers.
In 1998, Steve Jobs told Business Week, A lot of times, people dont know what
they want until you show it to them.

Lastly, I will dare to say that Apple is choosing not to adapt its products to the
local culture, because it does not need to. Apple is the culture. This is the culture
that people want to embrace when they wait in line at Apple Stores when they
could just buy the product online. People want to experience being a part of
Apple with its culture of hip, fashion, creativity, personality, and design. Apple
creates the culture and customers become its embodiment.

Apple has many detractors. But in the end, a successful brand is one that elicits
powerful emotion and positive sentiment from its customers. How many
competitors of Apple wouldnt want to find the path to their customers hearts in
a similar way?
Apples Product Development Process Inside the Worlds Greatest Design
Organization

Apples Product Development Process may be one of the most successful design
process ever implemented. With the company verging on becoming the worlds
first $1 trillion business organization theres a lot that designers can learn from
Apple and introduce into their own design environments.

Apple is a notoriously secretive business. In Steve Jobs time at the company it

would have been near impossible to find out about the internal workings of the
business. This isnt surprising when a businesss market advantage is its design
approach. Its worth keeping it under wraps.

However, Adam Lashinsky, the author of Inside Apple: How Americas most
Admired and Secretive Company Really Works has been given a look at the
process. While there are still aspects of the way that Apple works that are
shrouded in secrecy you can get a good idea of the overall high level process.

Apples Product Development Process

Design is at the Forefront

Author/Copyright holder: GiuliaPiccoliTrapletti . Copyright terms and licence: CC

BY-SA 4.0
How do you give designers the freedom to design and ensure that the products
they product fulfil their visions? Well at Apple they put design at the forefront.

Jony Ive the British designer that is the Chief Design Officer (CDO) at Apple
and his design team lead the company and they do not report to finance,
manufacturing, etc. They are given free rein to set their own budgets and are
given the ability to ignore manufacturing practicalities.

At the heart of the design department is the Industrial Design Studio where only
a select few Apple employees have access.

Its a simple concept that allows for the creation of incredible products.

Design Teams are Separated From the Larger Company

When a design team works on a new product they are then cut off from the rest
of the Apple business. They may even implement physical controls to prevent the
team from interacting with other Apple employees during the day.

The team is also removed from the traditional Apple hierarchy at this point. They
create their own reporting structures and report directly to the executive team.
This leaves them free to focus on design rather than day-to-day minutiae.
A Documented Development Process

Author/Copyright holder: Ed Uthman . Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA

2.5

The Apple New Product Process (ANPP) information is given to a product

development team when they begin work. It details every stage of the design
process and it goes into elaborate detail. The idea is to define what stages the
product creation team will go through, who will be responsible for delivering the
final product, who works on which stage and where they work and also when the
product is expected to be completed.

Accelerate your career: Get industry-trusted Course Certificates

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Starts in 23 hrs 49 mins 58 secs97% booked: Become a UX Designer from
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products people will love
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Monday is Review Day

The Apple Executive Team holds a regular Monday meeting to examine every
single product that the company has in design phase at that point in time. This
isnt as daunting as it may sound; one of the keys to Apples success is that they
dont work on hundreds of new products at once. Instead, resources are
concentrated on a handful of projects that are expected to bear fruit rather than
being diluted over many lesser projects.

If a product cannot be reviewed at one meeting its automatically at the top of

the agenda for the next meeting. In practice, this should mean that every single
Apple product is inspected by the executive team at least once a fortnight. This
keeps delays in decision making to a minimum and enables the company to be
very lean with its approach to design.

The EPM and the GSM

The EPM is the engineering program manager and the GSM is the global supply
manager. Together they are known within Apple as the EPM Mafia. Its their job
to take over when a product moves from design to production.

As you might expect, these people are usually going to be found in China, Apple
does very little of its own manufacturing. Instead it relies on contract
outsourcing companies like Foxconn (one of the largest employers in the world)
to do this for them. This removes much of the headache of manufacturing for
Apple whilst keeping production costs as low as possible. There is a significant
market advantage to this approach and its one that many other electronics
manufacturers are emulating now.

The EPM Mafia may sound scary (and they probably are to the suppliers) but
their real job is simply to ensure that products are delivered to market in the
right way, at the right time and at the right cost. They may disagree at points but
their guiding principle is to act in the interests of the product at all times.

Iteration Is Key

Like any good design company, the design process at Apple is not over when
manufacturing begins. In fact, Apple iterates the design throughout
manufacturing. The product is built, its tested and reviewed, then the design
team improves on it and its built all over again. These cycles take 4-6 weeks at a
time and may be run many times over a products development lifecycle.

Author/Copyright holder: CyberDoc LLC . Copyright terms and licence: Fair Use.

When production is complete the EPM will take possession of some or all of the
test devices and then take them back to Apples headquarters at Cupertino.

This is a very costly approach but its one of the reasons that Apple has a
reputation for quality. The more you invest in design, the more likely you are to
build incredible market changing products. Its the process that the iPod, the
iPhone and the iPad went through.

The Packaging Room

This is a very-high security area in Apple and its where prototypes are unboxed.
As you might expect, the security is to prevent leaks to the outside world. If you
ever do see a leaked prototype for an Apple product it wont have come from
here. Its more likely to have vanished from a production line in China.

A Launch Plan

Author/Copyright holder: Manutaus. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 3.0

The final step in Apples product development is product launch. When the
product is considered to be as good as it can be it enters an action plan known
as the Rules of the Road. This explains all the responsibilities and actions that
must be taken prior to a commercial launch of the product.

It must be a nerve-wracking experience to be privy to the Rules of the Road

because if you lose it or leak it youre immediately fired. This is explained in the
document itself.
The Take Away
Apples process is complex, expensive and demanding. If you compare it to most
business theories it shouldnt work. However, to date it has out-performed
even the wildest of expectations.

You may not be able to emulate all of their processes within the space of your
own workplace but theres no reason that you cant develop written processes
for design phases and launch phases of your projects, for example. And, of
course, there is no reason at all for you in not iterating!

Accelerate your career: Get industry-trusted Course Certificates

BEGINNER UX COURSES STARTING SOON
Starts in 23 hrs 49 mins 58 secs97% booked: Become a UX Designer from
scratch
Starts in 1 days92% booked: Web Design for Usability
INTERMEDIATE UX COURSES STARTING SOON
Starts in 23 hrs 49 mins 58 secs99% booked: Emotional Design: How to make
products people will love
Starts in 1 days92% booked: Mobile User Experience (UX) Design
The more you know about successful design processes, the more you can take
some of the best aspects of them and use them to enhance your own products.

Resources
Find out all the details of the design process in: Inside Apple: How America's
Most Admired--and Secretive--Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky ISBN
97814555512157, Published January 25, 2012

And take an insight into Apples greatest designers mind in: JonyIve: The Genius
Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney ISBN 159184617X,
Published November 14, 2013

Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Sreejithk2000. Copyright terms and

licence: Public Domain.
This is how Apples top secret product development process works
by MATTHEW PANZARINO Jan 25, 2012 in APPLE
This is how Apples top secret product development process works

Many aspects of Apples product development process have long been shrouded
in mystery. The process is discussed in a new book Inside Apple: How Americas
Most Admiredand SecretiveCompany Really Works, by Adam Lashinsky, which
is out now. The book talks about a variety of different aspects of Apple as a
company; its philosophy, its hiring process and its legendary secrecy.

But Apples product process has held a strong fascination for many over the
years as it defies long-held conventions about how it should work for companies
as large as it is. While some of these points have been revealed before, there is
much here that is new to me. Lashinskys compact tome, which is fantastic, goes
into detail on every aspect of the process and is well worth a read.

This is the framework on which every Apple product development process is

hung:

Apple product design process: every product at Apple starts with design.
Designers are treated like royalty at Apple, where the entire product conforms to
their vision. This the polar opposite of the way it works at other companies.
Instead of the design being beholden to the manufacturing, finance or
manufacturing departments, these all conform to the will of the design
department headed by Jony Ive.

Jonathan Ive, Chief Design Officer (CDO) of Apple Inc

Designers at Apple have literally no contact with the finance departments at all
and are considered to be unlimited in terms of the costs or manufacturing
practicality of the materials used. The Industrial Design studio is the womb of all
Apple products. It is where they are first generated and it is only accessible to a
small number of Apple employees including Jonathan Ive.
New product team: a start-up is formed.
Once a new product has been decided on, a team is organized and segregated
from the rest of the company by secrecy agreements and sometimes physical
barriers. Sections of the building may be locked or cordoned off to make room
for the teams working on a sensitive new project. This effectively creates a start-
up inside the company that is only responsible to the executive team, freeing
them from the reporting structure of a big company.

Apple New Product Process (ANPP).

Once the design of the product has begun, the ANPP is put into action. This is a
document that sets out every step in the product development process of a
product in detail. Its not an original Apple concept but was first applied at the
company during the development of the Macintosh. It maps out the stages of the
creation, who is responsible for completion, who will work on each stage and
when they will be completed.

Products are reviewed every Monday.

The ET (Executive Team) meets every Monday to go over every product that the
company has in process. It is able to accomplish this because Apple has so few
products in production at any given time. Any that do not get a review are rolled
over to the next review Monday. This means that no product is ever more than
two-weeks away from a key decision being made.

The EPM mafia.

Once a product begins production, two responsible people are enlisted to bring it
to fruition. The engineering program manager (EPM) and the global supply
manager (GSM). The former has absolute control of the product process and is so
powerful that it is referred to as the EPM mafia. Both of these positions are
held by executives that spend most of their time in China overseeing the
production process. The supply manager and program manager collaborate, but
not without tension, always making decisions based on what is best for the
product.

Once a product is done, it is designed, built and tested again.

At times there are leaks that display versions of a product like the iPhone that we
never see released. Many times these leaks come from China, where a factory
worker has been paid to hand off a prototype to a blogger or journalist. It turns
out that once Apple is done building a product, it redesigns the product and
sends it through the manufacturing process again, explaining the various
versions we may see leaked. This is a 4-6 week process that ends with a
gathering of responsible Apple employees at the factory.

The EPM then takes the beta device back to Cupertino for examination and
comments, hopping right back on a plane to China to oversee the next iteration
of the product. This means that many versions of any given device have been
completed, not just partially prototyped. This is an insanely expensive way of
building a new product, but it is the standard at Apple.

The packaging room.

A room in the Marketing building is completely dedicated to device packaging.
The security here is matched only by the sections of the building dedicated to
new products and to design. At one point before a new iPod was launched there
was an employee who spent hours every day for months simply opening the
hundreds of box prototypes within in order to experience and refine the
unboxing process.

iPod nano Package

Apple new product launch is controlled by the Rules of the Road.
An action plan for the product launch is generated, called the Rules of the Road.
Its a top secret document that lists every significant milestone of a products
development up until launch. Each milestone is annotated with a DRI (directly
responsible individual) that is in charge of making that item happen. Losing or
revealing this document to the wrong people results in an immediate firing, as
noted in the document itself.

As you can see from the breakdown, Apple often makes decisions that make the
process more expensive and less efficient in order to produce a seriously better
product. These are things that shouldnt pay nearly the dividends they do, but
consistently fail to disappoint. Many companies are too complex, or too
hidebound in the traditional way of doing things, to take on many, if any, aspects
of Apples process. Still, there is an alluring simplicity to Apples accountability
schemes and its devotion to good products first. And there is, of course, the
massive financial success of the company over the past 10 years.

This product development process is just a fraction of the information revealed

in Lashinskys book, which is available today in a variety of formats. If youre a
student of Apple or of electronics manufacturing at large then it should be added
to your reading list post-haste.