Product development practices that matter

Product Development consists of activities to transforms a market opportunity and technological innovation into successful products. Several waves of improvements in technological innovation and prod¬uct development have already substantially enhanced companies’ ability to deliver differentiated products to markets faster, more efficiently, and with higher quality. However, the degree of success achieved has varied greatly between companies and even among units within individual companies. Determining important processes in the product development and their relationships with organizational and project performance are crucial to sustainable success in product development. Studying these relationships would give us insights into the product development dynamics. The objectives of this research are to determine important product development processes and their relationship with each other and organizational capabilities. To achieve the objectives of this research, a step-based approach was adopted. First, understand relationship between processes and firm’s actual financials such as Sales, R&D Expenditure, and COGS. Second, identify relationship between processes and self-reported performance on Financials, Operational Effectiveness, Product Performance, and Customer Satisfaction. Third, identify relationship among different performance parameters to unearth indirect impact of processes on performance. In each step, processes were studied at three levels. Processes were combined based on our classification and the way they statistically cluster. Research used Linear Regression Analysis, ANOVA Analysis, Principal Component Analysis, and Cluster Analysis. Fourth, test four hypotheses based on statistics. The work in this thesis illustrates how various product development practices may influence performance measures of organization. While we focused on companies in the Automotive, Hi-Tech and Medical-device industries, I believe that product makers of all stripes could benefit from this work.