New Product Development Project Management Research Articles

Coordination Resistance in Cross-Functional NPD Projects: The Moderating Role of Temporal Leadership

Coordination cost is a critical management issue in cross-functional automotive new product development (NPD) projects, especially in complex environments. However, the literature has neglected to analyze the specific mechanisms by which coordination costs due to complexity may be reduced. This article examines whether and how two dimensions of temporal leadership reduce the coordination cost caused by complexity. In particular, we argue that two dimensions of temporal leadership, namely relationship-oriented and task-oriented temporal leadership, mitigate the effects of complexity on NPD coordination cost through coordination resistance. Based on survey data from 196 automotive NPD project managers, results show that coordination resistance significantly mediates the relationship between complexity and coordination costs. Relationship- and task-oriented temporal leadership also moderate the relationship between different kinds of project complexity and coordination resistance. When the level of relationship-oriented temporal leadership is high, the effect of organizational complexity on coordination resistance weakens. Contrary to our hypotheses, the effect of technological complexity on coordination resistance is stronger when the level of task-oriented temporal leadership is high, suggesting that the project manager should consider different dimensions of temporal leadership when faced with different complexities.

An exploratory investigation of performance criteria in managing and controlling new product development projects: Canadian SMEs' perspectives

PurposeThis paper aims to understand and document evaluation criteria used in the new product development (NPD) process of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to support the management and control of their NPD projects.Design/methodology/approachThis study combines exploratory and explanatory methodology (case studies) involving five Canadian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are successful in NPD. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with nine selected managers and project managers to explore the process and evaluation criteria used to manage and control NPD projects.FindingsThe results highlight that cost, time and quality are key evaluation criteria used by SMEs to make decisions relative to the NPD project's success. Profitability, return on investment, expected sales and customer satisfaction are additional criteria used to evaluate NPD project's success. It has been also found that the SMEs did not consider sustainability issues in the criteria used as their focus are on the needs of stakeholders, mainly customers.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations: The evaluation criteria are extracted from a limited number of SMEs that have successfully carried out NPD projects and may therefore be influenced by some contextual factors. The results cannot be generalized to all SMEs or to all projects, as their characteristics may differ. Implications: This study offers a novel outlook on NPD process in SMEs, by documenting criteria related to constraints in project management. The integration of theory of constraints contributes to increasing theoretical knowledge about the management and control of NPD projects in SMEs. It provides insight into how project managers (and other decision makers) can increase the chances of project success by managing project constraints and criteria.Practical implicationsThe evaluation criteria identified in this study can therefore be of use to SMEs managers and project leaders seeking to improve the management and control of their NPD projects. These criteria can help them better manage their limited resources and skills and allocate them to the most promising projects. They can also help them conduct their NPD process more efficiently to achieve the intended objectives, including the desired project profitability targets.Originality/valueThis paper offers new insight and practical implications about evaluation criteria within the stages and activities of the NPD process that needed to be considered by SMEs' managers involved in NPD projects.

New product development project management: Insights and research tendency from a bibliometric-based literature review

The research in relation to new product development (NPD) project management has been very rich in the past decade. However, there has been a lack of quantitative literature reviews investigating the status and evolution of research. In this study, we aimed to fill this gap by reviewing the NPD project management literature in the SCI-E and SSCI databases from 2012 to 2021 using the bibliometric method and the CiteSpace tool. First, we provided an overview of publications and identified several leading journals. Second, based on a keyword co-occurrence network, we identified five important research themes in NPD project management: optimization and simulation, knowledge management, product innovation, performance and success factors, and development strategy and firm strategy. Furthermore, we reviewed the important literature relating to each theme. Third, we analyzed the evolution of the NPD project management literature, as well as identifying research hotpots in the last 10 years, by creating a keyword time zone network. Finally, we proposed future trends in NPD project management research to fill the existing gaps.

AHP-FMEA-DA multi-criteria method for NPD project launch analysis

Nowadays, new product development (NPD) process, demands the shortest development cycle-time to introduce new products into global markets, likewise, NPD helps firms to offer better products for their consumers, for this reason, different tools and methods are used to assure product launched on time without failures, failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a useful tool in risk analysis and multicriteria decision making (MCDM). However, NPD requires an accurate risk assessment to assign the resources and optimise them during the process. This document aims to introduce a modified FMEA method used in combination with Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) and Dimensional Analysis (DA), offering an accurate risk assessment. The AHPFMEA-DA method intends to help Engineers and NPD Project Managers handling risks identified, besides, to make better decisions to allocate the resources available wisely. Additionally, this document contains a practical example of an NPD project to validate the proposed method.

Defining success in open source hardware development projects: a survey of practitioners

Abstract Recent years have seen the rise of citizens as contributors to hardware product creation. This trend has increased attention to open source hardware (OSH): a phenomenon that extends the intellectual property management and development practices in open source software (OSS) into the design of physical objects. OSH projects are different from OSS projects due to product type, and distinct from traditional closed source new product development (NPD) ones due to their openness. These differences challenge the degree of applicability of existing project success definitions in the OSH context. To investigate project success in OSH, we conducted a qualitative survey with practitioners. We report characteristics of successful OSH projects through three identified themes: (a) value creation – the big-picture impact, (b) quality of output – the quality of the hardware and accompanying documentation and (c) project process – activities that contribute to success. We contextualise by comparing OSH with selected literature on the success of OSS and NPD project management. While our study confirms a similarity between OSS and OSH in defining project success, it also highlights themes that are uniquely important to the latter. These findings are helpful for OSH development practice and could provide lessons for OSS development and closed source NPD.

Project manager knowledge hiding, subordinates’ work-related stress and turnover intentions: empirical evidence from Chinese NPD projects

PurposeAlthough scholars have provided sufficient empirical evidence on the effect of peer knowledge hiding on new product development (NPD) project team outcomes, little attention has been given to the relationship between project manager knowledge hiding and individual outcomes. Drawing on the job resources-demands model and a dyadic stressor perspective, this study aims to explore the effect of project manager knowledge hiding on subordinates’ turnover intentions as well as the mediating roles of challenge- and hindrance-related stress.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducted a multiple-source survey of NPD project managers and their subordinates in China. Hypotheses were tested by using data collected from 171 manager–subordinate dyads in NPD projects.FindingsThe findings revealed that project manager knowledge hiding was positively associated with subordinates’ turnover intentions, challenge-related stress and hindrance-related stress. Project manager knowledge hiding imposed a positive indirect effect on turnover intentions through hindrance-related stress, whereas the mediating effect of challenge-related stress was not significant.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to investigate the individual outcomes of top-down knowledge hiding as well as the mediating roles of challenge- and hindrance-related stress in the context of NPD projects.

The Influence of Competition on New Product Development Project Planning Decisions

In a typical new product development (NPD) project, there are many alternatives, ranging from incremental changes or re-engineering of an existing product in order to compete better in an existing market, to breakthrough thinking and the development of a new product using new technologies that satisfy the needs and expectations of customers in new markets. We tested the hypothesis that competition influences the decisions of entrepreneurs managing NPD projects. The findings presented in this paper are based on a controlled experiment conducted in several project management courses using a simulation game. The results reveal that a competitive environment in which participants compete for the same customers tends to impact the planning of NPD projects. The paper contributes to the managerial practice by offering integration of “What if?” analysis in the planning phase of NPD projects. It can assist entrepreneurs to evaluate the tradeoffs of the feasible alternatives in a noncompetitive environment, and explain how market conditions, such as competitor entry behavior, affect the project plan. A decision on the best project plan, among all the feasible project plans, is based on management strategy that takes into account the level of competition along with the uncertainty in the technology, market, and environment. The game, combined with a simulation-based training tool, used in this study, offer an opportunity to develop and to try different alternatives for the management of NPD projects without risking the consequences of project failure.

Alcatel-Lucent falls, Huawei ascends: new product development makes the difference

PurposeThis study aims to use the new product development (NPD) perspective to understand why traditional leading telecom equipment companies, such as Alcatel-Lucent (ALu), have stagnated but the newcomer Huawei has achieved steady growth.Design/methodology/approachThis paper takes the form of a comparative case study.FindingsThree significant differences in NPD process between the companies were discovered: first, although both companies claim that they are market-oriented, Huawei’s NPD projects are customer-driven, and ALu projects are joint considerations of customer demand and technology leadership; second, Huawei uses a design-to-value strategy, and ALu applies a design-for-quality-premium strategy; third, resources are allocated and shared at the corporate level in Huawei and at the business division level in ALu.Practical implicationsThis study offers several implications for NPD managers. First, holding a market leader position is more important than being a technology leader. Companies must fundamentally change their mind-sets, restructure NPD models and prioritize and empower marketing and sales departments in the decision-making and management of NPD projects. Second, to maximize customer value, managers must balance cost and quality and avoid overengineering. A quality premium no longer necessarily leads to product competitiveness. Third, to improve the efficiency of NPD performance, companies must build up a mechanism to enable across-boundary resources.Originality/valueThis study highlights a number of key NPD strategy issues. It was conducted in the telecom equipment industry, but NPD managers of other industries will also gain useful insights from the discussion.

The role of financial control in new product development: empirical insights into project managers’ experiences

This paper explores financial control in new product development (NPD) project managers’ work. To supplement previous literature on controlling innovation activities, the paper focuses on NPD project managers’ versatile role of being under control (about meeting NPD project objectives), in control (about actually fulfilling those objectives by mobilizing the project team), and in a central role in further developing the NPD project management practice. This paper is an exploratory interview study based on in-depth interviews with eight NPD project managers in seven organizations. NPD project managers’ viewpoints need to be acknowledged, as they have a significant influence on NPD project performance; the support of financial control should be designed and utilized accordingly. Examining a versatile managerial role, such as that of an NPD project manager, potentially unveils fundamental questions in management control practices, e.g., how could financial control better support innovation activities. In this paper, we contribute to management control research by (1) highlighting the role of financial control in supporting NPD project managers’ work both in project model execution and wider reflections on the business impacts; (2) identifying the extended list of units of analysis of financial control needed to ensure that NPD objectives are met; and (3) showing that project managers desire a more active role from financial control in NPD project management. If more comprehensive accounting information was provided and used for project management purposes, this would imply new tasks to NPD project managers, controllers, and other parties involved in NPD projects—possibly shifting focus towards more comprehensive, long-term business impacts. Finally, based on our exploratory results, we provide six propositions to inspire future management control studies.

Strategic orientation and new product development performance: The role of networking capability and networking ability

While strategic orientation can represent an important antecedent to new product development (NPD) performance, research suggests that adopting a strategic orientation alone is not sufficient and a better understanding of contingencies is necessary. Based on the dynamic capability view of the firm, this study examines the effect of a firm's ability to connect with external network partners (networking capability) and the ability of NPD project managers to network with stakeholders within the firm (networking ability). The empirical results indicate that market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation are positively associated with NPD performance when a firm has sufficient networking capability to manage network dynamics and when the managers of NPD projects possess networking ability to successfully mobilize the support and advocacy of stakeholders within the firm. The results also show that NPD performance is highest when market (entrepreneurial) orientation, networking capability, and networking ability are all high, thus supporting the proposed three-way interaction.

Assessing Integration between Project Management with NPD Process in Heavy Industrial Components Industry and Developing a Framework to Align them

This report aims to provide a research how companies align New Product Development (NPD) Process and Project Management in their organizations. Developing a new product on time and within budget is a huge challenge to be faced in today's competitive marketplace. One of the major constraints faced for NPD success is day to day Project Management. The Research results explored how companies structure their NPD process and Project Management to strike a balance between the needs to optimize efficiency and flexibility of both, which often carry opposing implications for organizing and managing projects and NPD process.This paper proposes a set of requirement for establishing a design and framework for Heavy Component Industries. The framework can aid Project Management Teams and New Product Development Process Teams to work in alignment and could optimally allocate resources and dynamically respond to unexpected delays and budget overruns.

Cross‐Functional Integration of R&D, Marketing, and Manufacturing in Radical and Incremental Product Innovations and Its Effects on Project Effectiveness and Efficiency

Previous research commonly emphasizes the positive effects of cross‐functional integration on performance measures. However, cross‐functional integration is a highly complex phenomenon which does not allow general conclusions in terms of performance impacts. Therefore, the present study assesses the impact of integrating the R&D, marketing, and manufacturing functions on the effectiveness and efficiency of new product development (NPD) projects. A multi‐functional design is applied that considers three functions, including manufacturing, which has been often neglected in prior research on cross‐functional integration. Further, the study distinguishes between two phases of the NPD process, namely the development and commercialization phases. In building the sample care was particularly taken to include a sufficient number of highly innovative NPD projects to cover the full range in terms of project innovativeness. This allows assessing the moderating role of project innovativeness on the effects of cross‐functional integration on NPD performance.A research model incorporating these ideas is theoretically developed and empirically validated by means of survey data. One hundred and eighteen NPD project managers participated in the survey (50 incremental and 68 radical innovation projects). Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the research model. More concretely, partial least squares (PLS) was used as the most accepted variance‐based approach.Generally, the findings emphasize that the relationships between various facets of cross‐functional integration and performance measures are highly complex. The integration between R&D and marketing positively impacts efficiency, but not effectiveness across different types of projects. Further, the impact of integration between marketing and R&D depends on the process stage and the degree of innovativeness. Findings regarding the integration between R&D and manufacturing show a strong positive impact on efficiency in the development phase. With respect to the integration between marketing and manufacturing, no significant effects on the performance dimensions can be observed for radical NPD projects. Overall, a positive impact of integration between these departments on effectiveness in the commercialization phase emerges.

Incentives in New Product Development Projects and the Role of Target Costing

This paper investigates how self-optimizing engineers affect new product development (NPD) project outcomes and development times. A variety of widely used NPD project management approaches, including heavyweight project management, may allow or even encourage engineers to introduce late design changes and exhibit weak cost compliance, reducing the product's profit or competitiveness. Providing specifically designed incentives for individuals can eliminate such encouragement, and thus improve cost compliance and project timeliness. This paper discusses several practical incentive schemes, including profit-sharing contracts and component-level target costing. For many industrial projects, component-level target costing makes the most efficient use of available information to optimize project outcomes and reduce development times.

Constructing the FCM model of the agile NPD process with a genetic algorithm: the case of Iranian companies

The agile New Product Development (NPD) process is a complex and integrated process wherein all of its main factors have cause-and-effect relationships. A Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) can be successfully applied to show the cause-and-effect relationships between the essential components in this kind of system and help managers extract a good view of this process and improve their decision quality. In this paper, an FCM model constructed with a Genetic Algorithm (GA) is proposed based on the interviews of NPD project managers in Iranian companies. The efficiency of the proposed model is compared with the FCM model constructed with a distance-based algorithm. The results shows that using a GA to construct the FCM model of the agile NPD process in Iranian companies is the better model compared to using a distance-based algorithm to construct the FCM model of this kind of process.

New product development management issues and decision‐making approaches

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report findings related to new product development (NPD) management issues and their corresponding decision‐making approaches undertaken by senior managers.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts grounded theory research method using interview as the primary data source. 100 NPD management issues, sourced from 16 senior managers from six technology‐based organizations in Malaysia, were investigated and analyzed.FindingsThe study revealed four categories of NPD management issues; strategic NPD management issues, NPD project management issues, NPD process and structural issues, and NPD people management issues. The study also found that senior managers apply different patterns of decision‐making approaches in dealing with each category of NPD management issues.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the findings from this study are within the specific context of technology‐based organizations in Malaysia, this exploratory study opens up a number of questions for further investigation.Practical implicationsThe discussion from this paper should also stimulate senior managers from other organizations or from other locations to reexamine categories of management issues in their organizations and how they approach them from a decision‐making perspective. This reflection could help identify areas which need further decision‐making skills development.Originality/valueThe classification of NPD management issues provides description of NPD management issues and the corresponding common decision‐making approaches. The study which was carried out at technology‐based organizations in Malaysia contributed to narrow down the geographical imbalances of NPD literatures, contributed to the body of NPD management literatures by bridging it with decision‐making theoretical perspective, and contributed to the naturalistic decision research stream.

Deciding on new products using a computer-assisted real options approach

Technical and market uncertainties are significant challenges for R&D management. Especially, in the case of New Product Development (NPD), investment decisions have to be made under uncertainty due to unknown costs and returns which arise from project complexity and duration. The framework of real options has been proposed for a better understanding of R&D project's uncertainty, for modelling management's flexibility during the project and for selecting the best project alternative. This paper describes the application of a real options approach to the management of NPD projects using standard computer-assisted add-ons to spreadsheet technology.

The effects of ambiguity on project task structure in new product development

New product development (NPD) projects are characterised by task ambiguity, whereby the set of tasks necessary for project completion and the relationships between tasks are initially unknown and only emerge as the development process unfolds. This paper uses interview data from NPD project managers in a large telecom firm to examine the influence of product requirements ambiguity on NPD task structures. The findings are used to propose a taxonomy outlining four generic patterns by which NPD task structures change during the product development process as a result of requirements ambiguity—task expansion, contraction, substitution and combination. The results also highlight in general terms the role of communication, coordination, knowledge and problem solving as distributed NPD project teams struggle to resolve ambiguity. Knowledge of how NPD project task structures evolve can lead to improved strategies for managing projects with ambiguous requirements. Two general types of strategies are suggested, decomposition of project tasks to minimize interdependence between tasks and the flexible adaptation of NPD task structures as new forms of task interdependence are recognised during the development process. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Exploring new product innovation types and performance: the roles of project leadership, functional influences, and design integration

This research study explores the impacts of project management on performance in three empirically identified new product development (NPD) project contexts: incremental NPD projects; architectural NPD projects; radical NPD projects. Each project type involves different levels and types of uncertainty. An information processing view of NPD suggests that different aspects of project leadership, functional influences, and design integration might be more or less important to project performance, depending on the project setting. The results of an exploratory analysis of 137 NPD projects confirm this expectation, suggesting that NPD project managers would benefit from recognising and acting upon these differences. Similarly, researchers should develop a contingent approach to project management reflecting the differing nature of uncertainties associated with different types of NPD.

Project Complexity and Efforts to Reduce Product Development Cycle Time

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.