Bringing agile project management into lead user projects

Abstract

The lead user method symbolises a technique of integrating advanced users into the New Product Development (NPD) to cope with firm's increasing necessity of successfully innovating. Implementing this method, companies often face challenges typically linked to barriers in project management. We analyse these drawbacks conducting an exploratory study among 249 companies in the German-speaking countries. To strengthen our results, we conduct six in-depth interviews to collect best practices in project management-related aspects. The outcome is a model based on agile project management and the stage-gate process that compensates identified weaknesses and provides an efficient, flexible implementation of lead users into practice.