Project Complexity and Efforts to Reduce Product Development Cycle Time

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One of the primary goals of new product development (NPD) teams is the reduction of development cycle time. To date, many companies continue to adhere to the structure and formality of standardized processes irrespective of the complexity of the development task at hand. Using a pattern-matching methodology, we selected 20 NPD projects for detailed study. The final sample was balanced on the basis of project complexity, cycle time, and company size. In-depth interviews conducted with the leaders of these projects highlighted several key differences in the approaches used to reduce cycle time in projects of varying complexity. The short-cycle simple projects in our sample tended to be run by autocratic leaders, who adhered to a well-defined product development process. In contrast, the short-cycle complex projects in our sample were run by leaders who used a more participative management style, used many external sources of information, and were less formal in their approach to NPD project management. The long-cycle project leaders in our sample were also more autocratic in their approach to project leadership, used less external sources of information, and generally adhered to the standardized, serial processing approach to NPD. Our findings indicate that short-cycle complex projects require a different type of management process than is evidenced in the literature. Managers of this type of project need to foster a short-cycle mentality among the project team and the company’s product development organization. At the same time they must exercise caution to ensure that the decision-making process is not dominated by the mere desire to be quicker.