In your business, like ours, there are literally thousands of ideas. But how do you know which one to focus on first? If at all! Challenging your assumptions and asking the right questions early on will help you avoid costly mistakes (that are often repeated). One way to put your idea through its paces and demonstrate viability is through a proof-of-concept (POC).
A well crafted POC allows you to test the feasibility of your idea using the least amount of resources. For the business sponsors who will eventually approve the company resources required to productionize your idea, a POC demonstrates tangible benefits, informs budgets and timelines, and helps identify any significant operational changes that may be required.
It’s also a very constructive way to promote innovation within your organization - and get widespread buy-in for your idea.
So, proving robots are the go.
This is a great place to start with a POC!
We all know that physical automation is transforming the way we work. And robots are making this once futurist vision a reality. But adding this powerful capability to any business comes with complexity, as well as massive shifts in process and human behaviour. It’s not always as easy as rolling a robot onto the ‘shop’ floor.
BUT, HOW CAN A POC HELP?
THE ROCOS POC
A POC will help you and your team take the fastest and most direct route to success - proving the viability of robotics in your use case.
And here’s our approach to make this happen.
1. Rally the troops and get ready.
You’ll need to allocate a Product Owner role - responsible for helping our team prioritize the deliverables for each iteration of the project; a Business Sponsor, Project Manager, and subject matter experts as the project requires them. Sometimes these are all the same individual within your business. We’ll supply a Project Manager, Lead Architect, Mechatronics and Software Engineers for the project - as required.
2. The thesis.
We’ll work with you to define the use case and hypothesis that will be tested through the process. Key deliverables are defined as well, and grouped into phases that align with the capabilities you’re trying to prove. This minimizes the risk later on of becoming blocked on difficult proof points at the expense of easier ones. For low complexity activities, more accurate estimates can be provided, as they have known tooling or approaches available to achieve the goal and therefore have lower delivery risk. For high complexity items, we’ll need to spend the time to run up-front analysis to assess necessary tooling and the approach we’ll need to take. High complexity items may require unpredictable effort to productionize, but these are useful findings in and of themselves, and will be called out as the POC progresses.
3. Sprinting from the start line to the finish.
Through a fast and iterative process, our team collaborates with yours in sprints. These sprints are usually two weeks in duration, allowing for frequent reprioritization between sprints as the project unfolds. Along the way, we’ll deliver tangible outputs, providing your stakeholders with a view of the progress we’re making, as well as code deployment as required. Regular iteration planning and demonstrations as we go means you’ll have complete control over how the project budget is utilized, and we can adjust as required.
4. It’s all about the data.
At each stage of the process, we’ll provide you with detailed reporting, to validate your hypothesis. We’ll map any pain points to possible solutions, and get feedback along the way. At each gate, our team and yours can prioritize the next iteration, deciding what is in scope or not.
Working with the Rocos team is low risk. We’ve got years of deep, proven experience in delivering high-tech POCs that provide the confidence your business needs to innovate and evolve.
The output!
At the end of our POC, you’ll have a set of documented deliverables which will prove your use case, without burning unnecessary resources. Best of all, you’ll remove the technology risk from your project, and show your business the power of robotics and the path to productionization.