When you set goals and objectives for a new product design, it helps to analyze your past successes and failures.
This rule will discuss:
There's another way to express Colonial Rule number ten. It could be restated that if you want to know where you're going, it's helpful to know where you've been. The key design principle here is that creating any new product requires some analysis. First, you need to identify the key goals and objectives of the master brand or program. Those goals and objectives could be driven by frustrations with your brand visibility, or perhaps the effectiveness of your sales message or collateral materials, or simply ways to reduce costs, become more efficient, and reinvest those funds elsewhere to drive sales.
Typically, most project managers will identify their future goals based on the success or failures of their current or past programs, if not every part of it, at least specific aspects that can make the most difference. Before anyone can start to set new goals for the future, it's necessary to spend some time looking backwards at the past. Ask questions like, "what happened," "was it good or bad," "what does it mean," "what did you like about it," "what didn't you like about it," "why was that," "what would you do if you had the chance to do it all again what would you never do again?"
Learn from the history and experiences you saw in the current program or project, and then apply that learning to the very next project. This theory applies to top of bed displays to help you sell more mattresses at retail, but it also applies to any other significant product development project as well. Colonial Rule number 10 reminds us that if you want to get ahead, start by looking backwards.