The following is a new business plan that is under development here. The current goal is to have it in place and ready to test by the middle of the year. I plan to start the company growth in earnest by the end of 2008, and then steadily take on more Developers as the growth can support it.

Development Process

The development process will follow a very fast iterative approach with the goal of spending as little time to get it to a presentable stage. Each iteration may have different development members involved, and may taking varying lengths of time, but all will be focused on defining the smallest piece of work that can be done to get the project to a next step. After each step, each concept will be reviewed by a group of Developers or the Managing Developers to confirm further support by the company prior to investing more development. Also, a concept may be released for sales presentation at any of these steps during the same review periods.
The steps:

1. Concept Ideation - This step will focus primarily on the why and not the how of the concept. The emphasis is put on coming up with a compelling, marketable product or line of products with little or no careful thought as to how to make it happen.
2. Concept Definition - This step focuses on thinking through the details more carefully and to consider what are the major selling points as well as the major technical challenges. This may possibly provide some rough ideas of target cost, a general solution to technical points, and a recommendation on the next development step.
3. Concept Renderings - This will provide some direction on how the final product might look and the plausible forms that it could take based on the function. It is desired that the design considers practical implementation issues, but is not confined solely by them. These designs should consider extremes of the possible forms and functions.
4. Proof of Concept Prototypes - In the event that the product features a system (mechanical, electrical, software) that is not readily found, a simple prototype should be made very quickly and simply to understand what the largest issues will be when pursuing further development.
5. Revised Concept Definition, Renderings, and Proof of Concept Prototypes - These steps are repeated until a clear direction is confirmed. It is not necessary to do them in sequence, only use the feedback from one step to re-define the others until an equilibrium is met.
6. Works-like Prototype - This prototype will focus on implementing the first key features that are necessary to showing the core concept strengths. This can include software, electronics, and mechanism. It will include an outward refinement that will make it usable for presentations.
7. Looks-like Prototype - This prototype is based off of the findings of the initial working prototype to refine the overall aesthetics and usability of the concept. Using the work-like and looks-like prototypes, a revised definition will be created until another equilibrium is met.
8. Production Design - Based on the final prototypes, all the final features and appearance will be created using the most appropriate method(s) for that project.
9. Final Prototype - This prototype represents a first generation product and is production ready. The main purpose of this level will be for customer presentations, and, as such, may still be further developed based on the feedback from presentations, focus groups, and user testing.
10. Production Release - Based on feedback from the Final Prototype, the concept design will be modified as necessary. The design at this point will focus primarily on cost effectiveness and ease of production.