Product Accelerator Program

Product Accelerator Program

Do you have a brilliant idea for a breakthrough product but can’t figure out how to take it from a concept to reality?

Most people need help successfully translating, verifying, and honing their vision into tangible reality. Delivering value others want to purchase is tough because ‌crafting successful products is always a challenging journey.

Every project needs an intricate and immense combination of multidisciplinary factors to be tuned just right to succeed. And the challenge is that it’s not always obvious what those things are, and the optimal order is obscure.

For example. How important is it for you to know what’s required to maximize your chances of success? Do you want clarity in knowing necessary tasks?

Success requires that you:

• Figure out every step of what you need to do.
• Find the right people with the right expertise.
• Find the optimal sequence of activities.
• Figure out potential obstacles and how to overcome them.
• And figure out the most effective way to get everything done.

You could dive in and figure it out as you go. However, your results will vary, and the path will be full of surprises. But before embarking on any journey, isn’t it a good idea to give yourself the best chance of success and find an experienced guide?

At Truth Shield, our team has experienced this _incredible _journey countless times with other amazing people like you. We can help you realize the full potential of your brilliant idea by guiding you through the complex maze of product development, helping you find the shortcuts, and ensuring you avoid devastating hazards.

Not only that, but we also make it easy by doing the heavy lifting. You bring a brilliant idea, and we magnify your probability of success. We work closely with you to reveal and navigate a clear, tested, and proven path. We help raise your unique vision from thought to reality.

APPLY TODAY!

Here are some helpful hints we hope will get you started in the right direction:

How to Ship Successful Software

Let’s say you want to produce a product.

• Do you want to create, grow, or diversify a business?
• Do you want to avoid getting burned?
• Do you want to ensure more success?

If so, ‌dive one level deeper and find the answers to these fundamental questions:

• Is your idea worth pursuing? Why?
• Will the market be there? How?
• Is it attainable? How?

The trick is to know where to start, see where you want to go, and plan how to get there.

Don’t leave success to chance. Enter with eyes wide open.

Typical software projects cost millions of dollars and take years.

Most fail.

Today, over 90% of software projects fail to meet one or more core objectives. 30% end in complete disaster. Nine out of ten startups fail.

But that doesn’t have to be your story. You don’t have to fall victim to today’s dismal industry odds.

And, it’s likely you already sense the secret to success through intuition. If you take a moment to think through your own life experiences, you probably realize that thinking through things is everything.

If you have seen any success and think back on it, you have already felt how vital it is to prepare, establish a future-focused strategy, and nail down some contingency plans before heading out the front door.

Based on experience, your gut probably tells you that proper preparation opens doors of opportunity and elevates your odds of success for reaching any aim: from getting your next meal on the table to navigating your career to producing successful products.

For example, everyone understands that successful building construction requires a blueprint. In the same way, every successful project sits on top of a rock-solid foundational plan, straightforward strategic organization, and crystal clear communication.

And the larger, more ambitious, and more complex your undertaking grows, the more people you need to coordinate. The more perspectives you have to work with, the higher the chances of misalignment. And this raises risks of your project derailing.

Protect yourself from elevated risks by establishing clear objectives, forming an organized plan, and ensuring precise alignment of everyone involved.

Don’t leave your success to chance. Your initial blueprints are your secret to beating the odds and drastically cutting your costs, time, and risks.

And it just takes a touch of common sense.

Imagine you want to take a trip. At the very least, before committing to a point where you can’t turn back, don’t you at least want to ask:

• How much will this cost?
• How long will this take?
• What are the risks?

While it should be common sense, today, too many projects blindly rocket forward and burn unnecessary time and money from the start.

Despite being a simple concept, the number of failures today is shocking because of insufficient planning, poor communication, and inadequate coordination. Brilliant ideas are a valuable starting point, but the next steps toward success are all about execution.

Here’s how you can prevent common failures from wrecking your project.

The four simple steps to software project success

There are four basic things to do for any successful journey.

1. Map Your Terrain →
2. Define Your Destination →
3. Chart Your Course →
4. Execute Your Plan

As you can see, while the steps complement one another, each purposefully builds on its predecessor.

And while every product project is unique, studies have revealed a couple of valuable rules of thumb.

Without preparation, here’s what you should expect.

• You will probably get crushed by extreme time and cost overages, swerving dangerously out of control. On average, expect costs between 2x to 10x to 100x over your initial guestimations or more.
• Your chances of hitting your target are around one in ten. And the target is just a hypothesis that needs testing. There’s a high probability you will have to take aim and adjust multiple times to meet your objectives.
• A complete collapse of your company will occur in about 15% of the projects you execute because damages explode exponentially.

Alternatively, with adequate preparation, here’s what you should expect.

• Your chances of success skyrocket. You will anywhere from double to 10x your probability of success.
• Your product’s value bypasses your competitors because of more precision alignment between stakeholders and customers.
• You can adjust your target in mid-flight, adapt, and zero in to efficiently meet your objectives.
• You completely mitigate risks of complete disaster through contingency planning.

But, here’s the thing. Nothing comes for free. But please don’t take our word. Gather all the information you need to proceed. And ensure you are thorough when thinking things through.

Adequate preparation always takes time, energy, and investment.

We refer to the earliest product stage as the “fuzzy front end” in product development. And it probably won’t surprise you that research has revealed that success requires preparation.

But here’s a secret: Adequate preparation doesn’t have to be prohibitive. It can take as little as 10% or less of your overall project time and may only be 1%-3% of your overall budget.

But returns on such a small early investment are massive if you think it through.

It’s a simple fact, but your initial preparations set boundaries for any endeavor. It makes sense because quality, cost, and timing are all massively influenced by initial decisions and direction.

Here’s what studies have shown.

During your preparation stage, the effort to optimize is lowest, and the beneficial effects on the innovation process are highest. Studies identify the front end as the greatest weakness in product innovation (Khurana and Rosenthal 1997).

Extensive empirical studies also consistently show that the most remarkable difference between winners and losers is the quality of execution of pre-development activities. (including Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1994)

The two primary factors playing roles in product success are:

• The quality of executing the pre-development activities,
• Establishing a well-defined product and project before the production phase (Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1990).

Yet, since the beginning of the software industry, we typically see that pre-development activities receive the least attention compared to product development and commercialization stages. (only 6% of dollars and 16% of person-days of the total Cooper and Kleinschmidt (1988)). Poor planning is a contributing cause of today’s 90% project failure rates.

Studies also uncover that successful projects see about twice as much money and time invested on the front-end.

Three primary factors drive high failure rates during the “fuzzy front end” phase:

• Insufficient early management.
• Lack of attention to risk.
• Inadequate initial investment.

So, your future is entirely in your hands, and the decision on how you move forward is entirely up to you. But regardless of your choice, it’s always a smart move to invest in your chances of future success today.

Remember that your initial decisions are vital in determining your success because they determine your course.

While defining the right direction comes at a cost, ignoring proper preparation is perilous because every direction change comes at a price. The cumulative impact of constant change pummels projects, crashes careers, and burns businesses.

Do you want to drive massive competitive advantages with your project through a minuscule investment in upfront due diligence? If so, proceed with caution and carefully pick your initial path.

Our primary advice is to protect yourself and prepare ahead because we want to see you prosper. We hope to see you take your first production steps with your eyes wide open.

Ultimately, you’ll have to choose if you will risk blindly driving into your future. Or you may prefer to ensure you thoroughly think through plans to avoid pitfalls, increase efficiencies, and see more success.

Step 1. Map Your Terrain.

You have two primary approaches you can take to start.

You could first spend tons of effort, time, and money building something, hoping to solve a nebulous problem. The risks are massive because you have not yet verified the issue you are solving.

And if there’s one thing everyone knows about assumptions: they are often dead wrong. But this doesn’t stop the devastating plague of solutions across looking for problems across all industries.

Taking a risky “build and pray” approach, you first pay to build a solution. You’ll likely need further investment and expeditions to discover a problem that fits your solution. And even if you glimpse a prospective target from the corner of your eye, you’ll likely have an expensive pivot to provide value.

If you start down this path or can imagine yourself in this scenario, you probably already realize the result is likely a massive waste of effort, money, and time. You see monumentally high failure rates. And experience staggering levels of stress.

Alternatively, it is also workable to clarify the target problem and verify the value of delivering a solution before your massive manufacturing investment. To avoid wasting precious effort, time, and money, you can choose to think, prepare, and engineer a strategy ‌to hit the bulls-eye with precision focus.

It should not shock you that the principal ingredient of any successful initiative is first looking ahead and having an obvious target. This simple case of cause and effect is why we advocate ‌that you plan to meet validated quantifiable value for your customer before manufacturing.

Look at it this way: Let’s say you aim to go swimming. Would you at least take a few seconds to look and ensure adequate water levels in the pool before jumping head-first off a diving board?

For software projects, accurate mapping of your customer needs is your initial blueprint. It’s your initial glance, verifying your investment, and ensuring adequate water levels in your pool.

Before building, clearly define your target users. Immerse yourself in their world. Surface their needs. And quantify how you will help with precision.

This clarity is how you define, validate, and verify business value for your customer. Map the terrain of your customer value. Your early investment here empowers you to plan a direct trajectory for your destination.

Now you have hard metrics to validate your investments. You ensure sufficient value where people will pay, and you can produce a profit.

Here’s the stark truth: no customer cares about products, features, or who we are. However, people will pull money from their pockets to make their lives better, easier, or to get results faster.

So before shipping solutions, it is vital to ensure a crystal clear understanding of your customers, their challenges, and the value you provide.

Construct a clear map of your business objectives and the value to your customers. Quantify and measure customer impact and significance to frame your value proposition.

Don’t risk searching for a destination after taking off on your voyage. Instead, prepare a deliberate drive toward success with precision, alignment, and purpose.

Step 2. Define Your Destination.

Next, define how you will deliver the business value you have verified. In addition, also prove that you can provide this value.

Don’t you need to know your destination to plan an accurately mapped route to provide business value?

It is entirely possible to achieve precision focus on your target product and validate value using modern tools and techniques before a massive investment in system construction.

Throughout the history of software development, studies show that smaller projects are massively more successful than megaprojects. A tidal wave of failure will smash down if your project is too large.

On the flip side, there is also a massive risk in going to market missing vital elements customers need. And if customers can’t get value, you will also fail due to low project efficiency at a high cost.

It’s vital to dream big while whittling down your scope just enough to deliver business value. Not too big. Not too small. Accuracy in defining a minimum viable product that will provide essential value in the shortest time is vital.

While this may seem simple conceptually, it’s pretty tricky to hit the nail on the head from a mile away. This challenge is why engineering discipline and focus here are invaluable.

Modern customer experience engineering (CX) techniques allow you to test your hypothesis, validate that you have legitimately solved your business case, and clarify your destination before investing in construction.

Think big. Build small. Fail fast. Get frequent feedback. And rapidly adapt—all before finalizing your ultimate destination.

The customer experience engineering process involves research, analysis, concept generation, validation, and verification. It considers when and how people consume a solution during their day-to-day lives.

Customer experience engineering (CX) also boosts customer satisfaction by ensuring that your solution is valuable, intelligible, and easy to consume.

The result of customer experience engineering is a user experience prototype, providing engineers with a clearly defined visual target. It is also a cornerstone for validation, functional requirements, and technical design.

Once you have zeroed in on the target customer experience, it’s time to fill in the gaps with the functional requirements.

Where your business requirements document the value of solving a business problem, functional requirements document precise behavioral specifications for providing exact value.

Functional requirements clarify critical details of how the mechanism providing value works. For example, if the user experience engineer came up with the concept of a “welcome screen,” a functional requirement may be that it should not take over three seconds to load.

It’s worth taking a minute to think through the dependencies here. You can only safely start engineering functional requirements using a vetted user experience design. Base your solution design on actual business requirements. Then, ‌leverage your functional specifications, business requirements, and target customer experience to select appropriate technologies, perform system engineering, and design the assembly of your product.

So, successful solution design validation requires that you:

• Rigorously analyze target customers and their behaviors.
• Understand your customer’s mental models
• Seamlessly map your solution to how customers perceive and interact with the world.
• Verify that your solution meets the defined needs of your customers.

Define your destination with a precise specification of both the visual and behavioral aspects of how you will help your customers achieve verified value.

Step 3. Chart your Course.

Now you hold the blueprints in your hand. You have a clear snapshot of your target destination. But you still need to figure out how to get there.

If you don’t know what materials you need, where you will find them, and when you can get them, you risk missing time, budget, and scope constraints.

If you don’t think through how you will handle surprises, it should be obvious you will probably smash face-first into a dead-end at high velocity.

To properly prepare for manufacturing, it’s worth understanding answers to basic construction questions. For example:

• What are the materials required?
• Where are they found?
• How much will they cost?
• When will they arrive?
• How do you coordinate bringing everything together?
• What are the likely manufacturing challenges?
• What are the essential contingency plans to address apparent challenges?

It’s impossible to plan a journey without knowing primary constraints like time, cost, and risk. Know where you are going. Chart a rational plan by discovering the dead ends ahead of time and working around them.

Now you can define your suite of technologies based on what each offers. Understand which are most effective and how you will weave them together.

Picking the right technologies is essential because intimate knowledge of your technical landscape helps you figure out what you can pull off the shelf, what you have to build, and how you will ultimately assemble your solution. Know the realistic capabilities available today, and which of tomorrow’s technologies you will have to invent from scratch.

Of course, you always have the option to just jump into your car, start driving and wing it. But your chances of success diminish the more involved your objectives become.

For example: If you are getting groceries, wouldn’t you want to know in advance if a flood has wiped out the bridge a mile up the road?

Here’s the thing: software construction projects are not as simple as planning to pick up some groceries from the store. You may already know this, but ‌no plan ever goes to plan. And the longer your path, the more unknowns. The more unknowns, the more possibility of nasty surprises.

Any successful expedition requires ensuring you have enough food, water, and meds. It’s no different on a journey of manufacturing. You need to plan and prepare in advance.

Target technologies, their capabilities, and the assembly and manufacturing sequence are essential to calculating your project’s time, costs, and risks. Hence, it’s vital that you prepare, communicate, and coordinate here.

Prepare for your expedition by ensuring you have adequate support, time, and supplies. Communicate your target and coordinate with everyone to ensure tight alignment before venturing off on construction.

One of the lesser-known nuances here is not to over-prescribe the microscopic detail of every step. Instead, you want a general, logical, and pragmatic plan. You need enough forethought to meet your goal and manage inevitable surprises without wasting effort.

Doesn’t it always make sense to have a general idea of your destination, no matter what you do? Don’t you want to know the resources you will need and the challenges you might face? Doesn’t common sense dictate that you have plans for when your project doesn’t go as planned?

You also need to know that the magnitude of what you don’t know is a massive black hole compared to a single ray of light. Keep your target small and focused. Plan just enough to get started as fast as possible and adapt because knowing surprise, learning, and change are always in your future is vital.

A project plan aims to guide, align, and prepare everyone for the inevitable required adjustments. Make sure everyone clearly understands your objectives. And provide a clear charted path to get there.

Gain a real-time understanding of anything off-track to trigger immediate reassessment, re-evaluation, and course correction.

To sum up this step, success requires preparation.

• Know why you are taking your journey
• Know where you are going,
• Know how you plan on everyone getting there,
• Know how you will manage all known and any unknown obstacles in your way.

Establish this foundation to maximize your probability of successfully shipping your solution.

Step 4. Start your journey.

Your preparation phase is complete.

It’s time to execute when all your stakeholders approve of the objectives, target solution, and plans to get there. It’s now as safe as it ever will be to invest in construction and build your system.

Now is when your journey truly begins.

• You now know your timeline, costs, and risks.
• You know how you will navigate.
• And you have contingency plans for surprises.

You are also now confident and calm because you understand how the execution of your plan will achieve your aim without blindly driving your career, finances, or future off a cliff.

Your three simple preparation steps give you the best chance at success. Now is when you open the door and take the fourth step into the shining future.

Review

Starting a new product can be difficult and time-consuming. It’s hard to know where to start and what to do.

Software projects fail because they don’t build on a solid foundation.

• They invest time and money without a clear view of their terrain.
• They lack a defined destination.
• And, there’s no clear path to hit the target.

Startups are the engine of our economy, and we need them to succeed. But chances of success are remote without a clear product position, vision, and path.

Some Help

Our exclusive Product Accelerator program will help you rapidly build a rock-solid foundation for your product so that it can stand up, survive, and thrive.

We add rocket fuel to boot velocity and launch your idea off the runway into the air fast and efficiently.

Don’t waste precious time figuring out what to do next, deciphering what success requires, or wondering how to build a solid foundation for your product. Instead, leverage our decades of experience to validate your ideas, clarify and communicate your requirements, and visualize your product so that it can take root and flourish in your market.

Apply for the Product Accelerator program today. If we accept your submission, we’ll work hand in hand with you and your team for a rapid realization of your vision. In as little as a couple of weeks, you will quickly and easily:

• Clarify and validate your idea.
• Align your solution with the needs of your customers.
• Verify your product will solve your customer’s needs.
• Create an engaging visual for your product.

Who is this for?

This program is for innovative people with brilliant ideas to build new products, test new business concepts, or start a company.

If you want to take your vision and turn it into reality while protecting yourself from getting burned, we are here to help.

How it works

In just five easy steps, with a tightly focused and professionally executed push, you can form the foundation for your product in just a few weeks through our premium Product Accelerator program.

Launch → Research → Prototype → Clarify → Present

Step 1. Launch:

This step is where we kick-off, set expectations, and start preparing for the amazing adventure ahead.

All stakeholders attend initial alignment workshops to deep-dive, brainstorm, and refine the vision.

Step 2. Research:

Next, we zoom in and clarify the problem you are solving.

All key stakeholders participate in individual interviews to define and refine critical objectives, uncover and mitigate risks, and prioritize and refine your product strategy.

Step 3. Prototype

Next, we figure out how you’ll solve your customer’s problem with precision accuracy.

Rapid prototyping techniques to quickly and efficiently iterate and define your solution. We develop an interactive prototype for your product. All stakeholders and potential customers provide frequent feedback as we rapidly iterate, refine, and validate.

Step 4. Clarify

Next, we surface all the nuanced constraints of solving the problem and precisely define and further validate your target MVP (minimum viable product).

Stakeholders take part in the review, risk assessment, and mitigation strategy formulation.

In addition, we dive deep to understand your existing situation, any needed integration, and all implementation constraints and requirements.

Step 5. Present

Next, we take a couple of days to put it all together.

Then we present the ultimate package, which includes:

• Your highly tuned and custom product strategy framework.
• Your clickable prototype.
• Your functional requirements.

We complete your program quickly in an intense couple of collaborative weeks deliberately engineered to rocket you towards success.

Options

It is vital to form your foundation for success before building and shipping any product. You can speed up your progress with expert guidance. By now, you understand that preparation is vital early in your project. However, it’s entirely up to you to choose your path.

Winging it

Nothing stops you from blindly building a product without adequate preparation and figuring it out as you go. However, this is the most stressful and least successful path to travel because:

• It’s a gamble whether you will provide actual value to your customer.
• You risk massive time, cost, and effort overage.,
• You can’t ensure that construction is workable.
• Competitors with better focus will outmaneuver you.
• Your expenses are a consistent burn rate with no end in sight

Without proper preparation, your ultimate costs will be massive, and your chance of success will be much less than the average (<10%)

The Typical Route

You could also go the traditional route of hiring business requirements “experts.” These projects are typically around $250,000 to $500,000 and ‌take four to 12 months but can quickly escalate much higher. There are no quality guarantees because most don’t know how to measure it. So, what you get will usually be unfit for technical teams.

• These projects are extensive, extremely involved, and require a massive time commitment, so you’ll need to ensure that loads of time, money, and resources are available.
• You ‌risk more nimble competitors taking shortcuts and getting out ahead of you.
• Vendors primarily focusing on producing requirements likely lack technical expertise and will focus on staying on as long as possible to maximize billable hours.
• The risk of bloated and unnecessary documentation is typically high because of poor processes, a lack of engineering acumen, and ‌open-ended time and material discovery projects.

You’ll likely spend many times your initial cost of having engineers decipher the documents to derive what they need to manufacture your product because of the lack of technical expertise.

With this typical approach, your expenses will be high. Your probability of successfully meeting your objectives will be minuscule: maybe one in ten, if you are lucky enough to ‌find one of the rare and elusive competent vendors.

Hit the Accelerator

As an alternative, you could leverage the Truth Shield Product Accelerator program.

Focus in fast. Rapidly iterate and adjust customer experience prototypes. Verify solution validity, impact, and attainability.

• Crystallize your key objectives quickly.
• Rapidly zero in on your customer value to outmaneuver competitors.
• Clarify your target MVP (minimum viable product): Derive the smallest set of features needed to deliver the biggest value and ensure essential coverage for your customers.
• Safely fail and learn the most when it’s safest, cheapest, and fastest.
• Maximize your product’s value and impact.
• Minimize construction costs with a clarified target.
• Achieve breakthrough alignment between your customers, stakeholders, and team members.

We help you validate, verify, and document everything vital for successful manufacturing at less than 1/10 the typical cost in less than 1/10th the typical time.

Who is this for?

Do you have a brilliant idea and want to validate and materialize your vision as fast as possible?

If you want to take a shortcut, outmaneuver other players in the field, and maximize your chances of success, this is for you.

• Do you want to beat the dismal industry odds of a 90% failure rate?
• Do you want to have enough information to get realistic construction estimates as fast as possible?
• Do you want to get it done in weeks, what typically takes months?

If so, we have a special offer for you. And, because you are reading this now, we are offering an exceptional bonus for a limited time.

Typically, we charge for technical design, but today we are investing in five applicants by adding a free technical evaluation, development roadmap, project plan, time, and expertly crafted estimates, so you’ll have a clear idea of construction costs.

In addition, we’ll give you a complimentary report on the quality of your requirement documents at no additional cost because we believe in quality, viability, and value first. You’ll see how your requirements stack up against industry-standard quality metrics.

We are offering this unique opportunity for no additional charge if you apply today because we believe so strongly in bringing the best new ideas to market rapidly and in the power of our program.

In addition, we proudly stand by the quality of our work. Truth Shield’s core business is ensuring crystal clear communication. At our heart, we are an engineering company solving communication challenges. The tools we have built guarantee your requirements meet industry-standard requirements of engineering quality and surpass them.

At Truth Shield, we stick to our schedules and deliver what we promise. So, if you follow our prescribed process and are not a raving fan, we have failed and will make it right. Just let us know by contacting our founder directly.

If you are unsatisfied, simply let us know and:

• You keep all the work products.
• We return 100% of your investment.
• And ‌we will write you a check for $1000 for your trouble.

We ensure you have nothing to lose and everything to gain because we are only interested in long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships and are genuinely here to help.

Our primary aim with our exclusive Truth Shield Product Accelerator Program is to see you succeed by helping you establish a solid foundation to launch your journey in the right direction.

So, to recap, you get:

• A highly tuned product strategy framework custom fit for your business.
• A world-class clickable prototype.
• High-quality functional requirements.

As a bonus, if you sign up today, you’ll get

• Quality analysis and reports on all work products
• Top-notch technical evaluation and design.
• Feasibility analysis.
• A custom product development roadmap.
• An optimized project execution design.
• And estimates, so you know the ultimate cost of construction.

All for 1/10th the cost of a typical discovery project in 1/10th the usual time.

We are excited to help bring your vision to life, see how your idea can change your life, and help you improve the world.

Don’t loose your seat in our exclusive product accelerator program.

Apply Today!