Time to Market is a concern for all businesses nowadays. To achieve success and benefit from the best business opportunities in such a competitive market, bringing new projects to market quickly is a must-do for organisations.

Technological companies are driven by yearly results and insatiable consumer expectations for meeting corporate growth objectives and shorter life cycles, so it is not surprising that every minute counts when it comes to project management. Time to Market in project management allows organisations to achieve better profits and stand out among its competitors.

What is Time to Market?

Time to Market (TTM) is commonly defined as the length of time from the conception of a product until it is released to the market. In Project Management, TTM is described as the time between when the team starts working on a project and when the project is completed.

Time to Market is measured in units of time from days, weeks, or months. One of the methods to measure Time to Market is to start tracking it immediately when your business decides to take an idea forward and stop tracking it when the project is finished. Some organizations prefer to start counting the time only once the idea is approved or when they have the necessary resources to work with.

Why is Time to Market important?

The most important reason that Time to Market matters is that it is vital to gain a competitive advantage. The increasing competitiveness in the IT market and the advance of technologies drive continuous changes and speed in markets. If your company can deliver a project fast to the market, it will most certainly capture more profit than your slower competitors.

By optimizing your Time to Market, you can take advantage of market opportunities and keep ahead of your direct competitors. This will give you the chance to maximise the latest technology and to gain brand recognition before other companies. A faster Time to Market brings a competitive advantage, reduces costs, improves customer satisfaction, grows revenue, and grows share.

On the other side, if your Time to Market is slow, other organisations may dominate the market by the time you get there. If your company does not meet its Time to Marget targets, it can also have significant financial losses. 

How can I accelerate Time to Market?

Results: One of the best ways to improve TTM is to measure the time you spend on the project tasks you are doing. You should look at the time taken and pinpoint where improvements can be made so you achieve better results.

Streamline the workflow: While involved in a project, you should consider what you are doing and why. Many projects may have an unnecessary bureaucracy that is slowing up your Time to Market, so you should streamline your workflow to save more time.

Agile working: Agile is an approach used for project management that helps to speed up Time to Market. Being agile helps your team conceptualize their work on a more direct level and create smaller work units, called sprints, that make it much easier to prospect out your work.

Transparency: Transparency ensures that everyone on your team is involved and aligned with the project and that the results can be adequately tracked. For this, every task that your team does must be clearly acknowledged and visible to the whole organization. Collecting and sharing information allows the different teams involved to engage with the projects on a deeper level and make suggestions to improve them. It also improves collaboration and helps to gain agility and make decisions more effectively.

Risk management: By identifying risks at the beginning of a project, you can take the necessary measures to mitigate them as soon as possible. This can minimize their potential impact in the long run, which can reduce delays and shorten Time to Market.

Outsourcing: Outsourcing tasks can speed up your Time to Market. This is especially beneficial because you can save time to focus on other important parts of the project you are developing, while the outsourced team fastens the process.

Assigning goals: Reducing Time to Market is only possible if you set realistic goals for your team. Creating goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) that are representative of real-world outcomes helps you to see the impact of changes and incentives your team to succeed in having a faster time to market.

If you are looking for the right team to help you improve your Project Management and achieve a faster Time to Market, PrimeIT might just be the answer. Talk to us!