Yep, and "people won't want a touchscreen on the floor."
The first step is to create a 3-page PID (Product Idea Document). Mainly a rough wireframe mockup of what it might look like, top five features, some early financial assumptions (target MAP, expected ex-factory cost, expected run rates, etc.). It's presented first to the Products team for additional brainstorming, and if approved, to the development team to get a rough idea of feasibility and cost. Then it's presented to the Sales and Marketing teams. Then there's a bi-weekly PID approval meeting where it's rated in a dozen or so categories, which gives it an overall score. That determines if it gets made and if so, how it should be prioritized given the existing product roadmap. On rare occasion a project may end up with a low score but its strategic and intangible benefits push it through.
Then the real work starts: TRDs (Technical Requirement Document), additional feasibility studies, cost studies, competitive matrices, etc. A 30+-slide Powerpoint is created and presented to about 50-60 people from all disciplines; everyone has a chance to ask questions, suggest changes, say "that's so dumb, Eric, you should be ashamed," etc. If it passes, it's officially made a project and is given a project code (Helix Floor is P21, Helix Rack is P28, Helix LT is P32, HX Effects is F15 (effects-only products have a different category for some reason), HX Stomp is P33, POD Go is P34-1, POD Go Wireless is P34-2, HX Stomp XL is P36, DL4 MkII is F16... The project code appears on a white sticker on the side of the packaging, so it's not really a secret.
What happened to P23, P24, P25, P26, P27, P29, P30, P31, and P35? Those projects were paused/backburnered, are still being developed, or were cancelled entirely. POD HD500X, POD HD Pro X, AMPLIFi FX100, and Firehawk FX are somewhere in there too (which all started
after Helix Floor) but I forget their codes.
There are additional gates the project has to go through—sometimes spanning several years—each one adding additional data and validation. At any gate, for any number of reasons, the project can be mercilessly killed.
If something costs a lot (or
appears to cost a lot) to develop and its benefits aren't completely understood by certain members of the staff, Product Managers may create a fancy animated Keynote/Powerpoint to explain how everything will work and if necessary, hook up a bunch of gear and computers to emulate it.
Some features and services are more strategic in nature or act as a test platform for a bigger set of features and services in the future. That is, users may not fully get why we do something, but it may make sense later. Roland/BOSS is really good about this—they'll occasionally release entire
products that may not make sense and don't sell
at all but include several features and/or hardware elements that find themselves in many future products. Just one example: their
SonicCell tabletop synth module was likely a test platform for a bunch of Fantom-G generation features.
We'll work with marketing to ensure they understand a feature's benefit, but they may choose to focus marketing deliverables on different stuff. That's totally fine, as long as I get to write the Release Notes and forum-centric FAQs so y'all get the real story.
