Cross-functional Product Development Teams Research Articles

Blurring boundaries: Toward the collective empathic understanding of product requirements

Many software product companies create cross-functional development teams that own a product or a defined set of features. These product teams often require a deep and collective understanding of the product domain, a rich context within which to understand the product requirements and to make decisions throughout the development process. Little is known about what supports or impedes these teams in collectively achieving this deep understanding. This paper identifies certain organisational conditions that impact teams in this respect. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory method, we studied 18 teams across seven software companies creating products for a diverse range of markets. The study found certain organisational and planning process factors play a significant role in whether product development teams have the potential to collectively develop deep domain understanding. These factors also impact individual and development team dynamics. We identify two essential metaphorical dynamics, broadening the lens and blurring boundaries, that cross-functional product teams employ in order to fully embrace product ownership, visioning, and planning towards achieving this rich context for understanding product requirements. We also conclude that the highly specialised nature of many organisational models and development processes is contraindicated for cross-functional product development teams in achieving this deep collective understanding and we call for a revisiting of conventional organisational and product planning practices for software product development.

Innovation in small and medium-sized companies: Knowledge integration mechanisms and the role of top managers’ networks

IntroductionPrevious research has delivered strong theoretical and empirical evidence that successful product innovations result from the of organizations to share and create new and relevant knowledge (e.g. Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). In particular, it is argued that the organizational combinative ability (Kogut & Zander, 1992), that is flexible integration of the specialized knowledge of various organizational members (Grant, 1996), plays critical role for innovations. Contrary to the past, as expertise could be centralized in single person who knew [...] the product technology, production process, and means to market goods to others (Griffin & Hauser, 1996, p. 192), now an intensive cooperation and knowledge flow between different functional specialties (e.g. Maltz et al., 2001, p. 72) as well as hierarchical levels (e.g. Aalbers et al., 2011) becomes an important precondition for product innovation. Past research has revealed that particularly for highly innovative products, knowledge integration within organizations plays crucial role in increasing new product performance (Tsai et al., 2012). Previous studies also identified number of integration mechanisms by which crossborder exchange of knowledge within organizations can be fostered (e.g. Griffin & Hauser, 1996; Leenders & Wierenga, 2002). For instance, in comprehensive review of empirical work into the success factors of new product development (NPD), Ernst (2002) found that cross-functional project teams have both direct and an indirect positive effect on the success of new products (Ernst, 2002). More specifically, as argued by Griffin and Hauser (1996, p. 204), such cross-functional product development teams lead to higher marketplace success and shorter times to market by decreasing the barriers of functionally specialized thought worlds, languages and organizational responsibilities and providing forum in which information is utilized better, decisions are made more effectively, and conflicts are resolved. In similar vein, Valle and Avella (2003) found that firms which use cross-functional teams, are characterized by more effective NPD process (that is, lower development times and costs, and superior products) and higher percentage of new products that are successful in the market.In addition to cross-functional teams, large number of empirical studies identified the support of senior management as critical success factor of NPD (e.g. Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995; Cooper et al., 2004a). Senior managers provide the NPD team with the financial and political resources necessary to accelerate the progress of development projects (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995). Moreover, senior managers help the NPD team to align their projects with the firm's overall strategic orientation. Thus, as Aalbers et al. (2011, p. 5) point out, vertical cross-hierarchy ties can provide the team with access to knowledge and information of different nature than that which the team accesses through its horizontal cross-unit ties. Accordingly, the participation of senior management in the gate meetings is seen as an important mechanism for knowledge integration within the new product development process (e.g. Cooper et al., 2004a).While numerous studies have addressed multiple aspects of integration and its impact on innovation performance, one important issue is still under-explored. In the samples of previous empirical studies big organizations were largely overrepresented (e.g. Griffin, 1997; Hauschildt & Salomo, 2011) and the contingencies of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have not been considered in comprehensive manner. This is critical point, since, as Welsh and White (1981) note, a small business is not little big business. Thus, management principles that have proven to be successful in large companies may prove the opposite in SMEs (Welsh & White, 1981). As SMEs constitute over 99 percent of all companies in the European Union, reinforcing national economies by their employment offers and revenues (Eurostat, 2009), focused analysis of knowledge integration in these companies is important from both the theoretical and the practical perspective. …

Task Conflict, Problem-Solving, and Yielding: Effects on Cognition and Performance in Functionally Diverse Innovation Teams

Although research on team cognition has focused mostly on sharedness and its benefits, differences in team member cognition (i.e., representational gaps) may not always have negative effects. In this article, we develop theory and test the positive and negative effects of representational gaps (rGaps) among team members in cross-functional product development teams and the central role of task conflict and conflict management (problem-solving and yielding) in predicting team cognition. rGaps are examined both in terms of average level within the team and the patterns of shared representations across members from different functional areas. These patterns capture potential asymmetries within the team.

The Effect of Interactional Fairness on the Performance of Cross‐Functional Product Development Teams: A Multilevel Mediated Model*

Cross‐functional product development teams (CFPDTs) are receiving increasing attention as a fundamental mechanism for achieving greater interfunctional integration in the product development process. However, little is known about how team members' interactional fairness perception—fairness perception based on the quality of interpersonal treatment received from the project manager during the new product development process—affects cross‐functional communication and the performance of CFPDTs. This study examines the effects of interactional fairness on both team members' performance and team performance as a whole. It was predicted that interactional fairness in CFPDTs would significantly affect team members' task performance, both task‐ and person‐focused interpersonal citizenship behaviors, as well as team performance. Additionally, commitment would partially mediate the effects of interactional fairness on these performance outcomes. Analyzing survey responses from two student samples of CFPDTs with hierarchical linear modeling techniques, it was demonstrated that team members' task performance, interpersonal citizenship behavior, and team performance are enhanced when team members are dedicated to both the team and the project, and such dedication is fostered when project managers are fair to team members in an interpersonal way.

REPRESENTATIONAL GAPS, TEAM INTEGRATION AND TEAM CREATIVITY.

Failures in cross-functional product development teams are often attributed to a team's inability to capitalize on their diversity. In this study we develop and test a model of representational gap...

From experience: leading dispersed teams

Although management can gain great performance benefit from colocating cross-functional product development teams, colocation is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve as companies globalize and form alliances. Consequently, this article offers guidance to keep your development team functioning effectively even though it may be dispersed across town or around the world.We aim our suggestions at the team leader, but both team members and managers will find helpful ideas and become sensitive to critical issues. For example, management often underestimates the loss in team performance as the team disperses and incorrectly assumes that communication technologies alone will largely overcome the complications of distance.An effective team depends on open, effective communication, which in turn depends on trust among members. Thus, trust is the foundation, but it is also the very quality that is most difficult to build at a distance. For this reason and for several others that occur in the very front of the project, we suggest that if you can get your team together face-to-face at any time during the project, do it at the beginning. You can establish trust while you are planning the project together, writing the product specification, formulating working approaches, and creating communication protocols (for example, how long before an e-mail must be answered?).Likewise, the most important maintenance activity during the middle of the project is retaining an effective level of trust, which is far easier than having to rebuild trust. In part, you accomplish this by “humanizing” the project: sharing team member biographical information, telling an occasional good-natured joke, and knowing when a colleague’s family member is in the hospital. We also cover communication technologies—which ones to select and why you need a variety of media. Although such technologies are necessary for running a dispersed team, they are not nearly as sufficient as many technology suppliers suggest.Another complication is that differences in culture tend to grow as the team spreads over greater distances, encountering different time zones, languages, ethnic groups, and thus corresponding values. Although such differences place challenges before the team, diversity also offers advantages to those who are sensitive to the facets of culture. Consequently, we break culture down into its components and suggest ways of working with each one.Although we tend to underestimate the complications of working at a distance today, in time, teams will learn the skills needed. In the meantime, the perceptive manager and team leader will pay special attention to building these skills.

Structural and contextual correlates of charged behavior in product development teams

Firms increasingly use cross‐functional teams to develop new products, yet we know little about the processes that make teams excel. Although studies have focused on within‐team processes like cooperation between and integration of individuals from various functional areas, some emerging literature suggests that the processes that make teams excel are richer and more complex than cooperation and integration. In order to capture the processes that lead to excellent market performance of new products, we introduce the concept of charged team behavior, the extent to which cross‐functional product development teams are enthusiastically and jointly driven to develop superior new products. Charged team behavior captures not only the drive, commitment, and joy of team members, but also their collaborative behaviors to achieve an exceptional outcome.We propose and test a series of hypotheses concerning how charged behavior affects new product market performance and how charged behavior is, in turn, influenced by both team structural characteristics (physical proximity, team longevity, and outcome interdependence) and contextual factors (senior management encouragement to take risk, quality orientation, exposure to customer input, extent of competition, and interdepartmental connectedness). It is particularly important to examine the antecedents of charged behavior because there are concerns that some of the team‐related factors generally considered to be useful for teams may not necessarily lead to charged teams.Data from new consumer product development teams is analyzed though structural equation modeling for hypothesis testing. We find evidence that highly charged teams are more likely to develop successful new products. Results also indicate that outcome interdependence, exposure to customer input, extent of competition, and interdepartmental connectedness are positively related to charged behavior. Physical proximity, team longevity, encouragement to take risk, and quality orientation do not improve teams' charged behavior. Data suggests that charged team behavior: 1) fully mediates the effects of outcome interdependence and interdepartmental connectedness on performance, 2) partially mediates the influence of exposure to customer input and the extent of competition on performance, and 3) does not mediate the effects of quality orientation and physical proximity on performance.Our study highlights the importance of creating highly charged product development teams in order to achieve exceptional performance. Further, our results indicate that some of the factors suggested by traditional social psychology research for enhancing team effectiveness (e.g., physical proximity and team longevity) may not necessarily create charged teams. Instead, charged teams need a special arrangement, in which members are accountable to the team and where their evaluations and rewards are also linked to the performance of the team. In addition, although a strong emphasis on quality is considered to be beneficial for new products, as our results indicate, such emphasis cannot create a charged atmosphere. Moreover, our research suggests that if the organization structure does not permit frequent contact between individuals across functional boundaries, the creation of a strongly charged team and development of a successful new product will be hindered.

Structural and contextual correlates of charged behavior in product development teams

Firms increasingly use cross-functional teams to develop new products, yet we know little about the processes that make teams excel. Although studies have focused on within-team processes like cooperation between and integration of individuals from various functional areas, some emerging literature suggests that the processes that make teams excel are richer and more complex than cooperation and integration. In order to capture the processes that lead to excellent market performance of new products, we introduce the concept of charged team behavior, the extent to which cross-functional product development teams are enthusiastically and jointly driven to develop superior new products. Charged team behavior captures not only the drive, commitment, and joy of team members, but also their collaborative behaviors to achieve an exceptional outcome. We propose and test a series of hypotheses concerning how charged behavior affects new product market performance and how charged behavior is, in turn, influenced by both team structural characteristics (physical proximity, team longevity, and outcome interdependence) and contextual factors (senior management encouragement to take risk, quality orientation, exposure to customer input, extent of competition, and interdepartmental connectedness). It is particularly important to examine the antecedents of charged behavior because there are concerns that some of the team-related factors generally considered to be useful for teams may not necessarily lead to charged teams. Data from new consumer product development teams is analyzed though structural equation modeling for hypothesis testing. We find evidence that highly charged teams are more likely to develop successful new products. Results also indicate that outcome interdependence, exposure to customer input, extent of competition, and interdepartmental connectedness are positively related to charged behavior. Physical proximity, team longevity, encouragement to take risk, and quality orientation do not improve teams’ charged behavior. Data suggests that charged team behavior: 1) fully mediates the effects of outcome interdependence and interdepartmental connectedness on performance, 2) partially mediates the influence of exposure to customer input and the extent of competition on performance, and 3) does not mediate the effects of quality orientation and physical proximity on performance. Our study highlights the importance of creating highly charged product development teams in order to achieve exceptional performance. Further, our results indicate that some of the factors suggested by traditional social psychology research for enhancing team effectiveness (e.g., physical proximity and team longevity) may not necessarily create charged teams. Instead, charged teams need a special arrangement, in which members are accountable to the team and where their evaluations and rewards are also linked to the performance of the team. In addition, although a strong emphasis on quality is considered to be beneficial for new products, as our results indicate, such emphasis cannot create a charged atmosphere. Moreover, our research suggests that if the organization structure does not permit frequent contact between individuals across functional boundaries, the creation of a strongly charged team and development of a successful new product will be hindered.

The Effect of Reward Structures on the Performance of Cross-Functional Product Development Teams

This study examines the effect of reward structures on the performance of cross-functional product development teams. Results suggest that when it is easy to evaluate individual performances, position-based differential rewards lead to greater satisfaction. For long and complex projects, process-based rewards have a negative effect and outcome-based rewards have a positive effect on performance. For risky projects and highly competitive or relatively stable industries, a nonlinear and monotonically decreasing relationship exists between outcome-based rewards and product quality.

Cross-Functional Product Development Teams, Creativity, and the Innovativeness of New Consumer Products

Multiple studies have found that the primary determinant of new product failure is an absence of innovativeness—the extent to which a new product provides meaningfully unique benefits. Given the persistence of this finding and the growing use of cross-functional teams in new product development projects, the authors examine how innovativeness is affected by various characteristics of cross-functional teams and contextual influences on the team. On the basis of a study of 141 cross-functional product development teams, the authors find that innovativeness is positively related to the strength of superordinate identity in the team, encouragement to take risk, customers' influence, and active monitoring of the project by senior management. Beyond a moderate level, social cohesion among team members has a negative effect on innovativeness. The effect of superordinate identity on innovativeness is strengthened by encouragement to take risk and weakened by social cohesion. Functional diversity has no effect on innovativeness. The authors discuss managerial and research implications of the findings.

Superordinate Identity in Cross-Functional Product Development Teams: Its Antecedents and Effect on New Product Performance

This research examines the role of team-based superordinate identity in influencing new product performance. The author also studies how several team-related factors affect superordinate identity and, through this psychological bond, influence new product performance. The findings, based on a sample of 118 teams, reveal that superordinate identity indeed enhances the performance of the new product developed by a team. Traditional group factors such as task interdependence and physical proximity do not play any role in influencing either superordinate identity or new product performance. Team longevity improves superordinate identity but has no effect on new product performance. Instead, a special team structure (i.e., high autonomy and outcome interdependence) improves both superordinate identity and new product performance. If interdepartmental connectedness in the firm is high, there is a reduced need for high autonomy in the team. Finally, the characteristics of the special team structure influence new product performance only through superordinate identity.

Withdrawal of Team Autonomy During Concurrent Engineering

Team autonomy is an essential characteristic of cross-functional teams engaged in concurrent engineering. At the same time it is a characteristic that North American firms have considerable difficulty in successfully implementing. Delegating a good deal of decision making to teams is often counteracted by processes that during a new product program withdraw some of a team's autonomy or discretion. Data from 53 cross-functional product development teams in 14 firms indicated that withdrawing autonomy is negatively correlated with both task and process aspects of team performance. The determinants of withdrawing discretion include lack of a shared understanding of the development process, environmental change, and lack of managerial “buy-in” to team autonomy. Consequently, successful implementation of team autonomy, through mitigating withdrawal of discretion, requires a clear well-communicated model of the development process, a freezing of design revisions, and policies that encourage managers to support the team rather than interfere in its decision making.

The influence of process concurrency on project outcomes in product development: an empirical study of cross-functional teams

This study examines the practice of concurrent engineering (CE) in terms of process concurrency, and the impact of concurrency on success of product development projects. The study is based on 50 cross-national projects from companies in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, United Kingdom, and the United States in the aerospace, automobile, chemical, computer, electronics, shipbuilding, and telecommunications industries. Four dimensions of process and behaviors of engineering/R&D and manufacturing members of cross-functional product development teams were reliably operationalized: (1) two-way communication, (2) overlapping problem solving, (3) readiness to make decisions on the basis of uncertain and ambiguous information, and (4) readiness to release uncertain and ambiguous information. These dimensions of process concurrency were found to be reliable predictors of development projects' success, as measured by product cost and quality, project schedule and budget performance, and project team satisfaction. The paper offers implications for theory and practice and models of CE management for future research.

Crossfunctional teams in product development: Accomodating the structure to the process

This article reports the conclusions from a study of crossfunctional product development teams with emphasis on the implications for altering organizational structure to accomodate team process. A comparative study of teams in four U.S. firms, using anthropological and sociolinguistic methods, found that team work is inherently paradoxical. It poses numerous contradictions and paradoxes for individuals, teams, and organizations. At one of the research sites, tacit recognition of this reality and a conviction that teams were critical to product development led to a continuous accomodation of the organization to the requirements of team work and to impressive organizational outcomes. Conceptual and managerial lessons are drawn from this successful case and are offered here to help guide both future research and the actual implementation of team work in firms.

Crossfunctional Teams in Product Development: Accommodating the Structure to the Process

This article reports the conclusions from a study of crossfunctional product development teams with emphasis on the implications for altering organizational structure to accommodate team process. A comparative study of teams in four U.S.firms, using anthropological and sociolinguistic methods, found that team work is inherently paradoxical. It poses numerous contradictions and paradoxes for individuals, teams, and organizations. At one of the research sites, tacit recognition of this reality and a conviction that teams were critical to product development led to a continuous accommodation of the organization to the requirements of team work and to impressive organizational outcomes. Conceptual and managerial lessons are drawn from this successful case and are offered here to help guide both future research and the actual implementation of team work in firms.