Upper management control of new product development projects and project performance

While some degree of freedom and flexibility is an essential ingredient to productive cross‐functional NPD teams, upper‐managers are faced with the challenge of instituting effective control mechanisms which head projects in the right strategic direction, monitor progress toward organizational and project goals, and allow for adjustments in the project if necessary. But too much or the wrong type of control may constrain the team's creativity, impede their progress, and injure their ultimate performance. Therefore, this study examines formal and interactive control mechanisms available to upper‐managers in controlling new product development (NPD) projects, and the relationship between these mechanisms and NPD project performance. Formal output and process controls are examined which consist of the setting and monitoring of outcomes, such as goals, schedule and budgets, and of processes and procedures, respectively. This study also looks at how the effectiveness of these control mechanisms may be contingent upon the degree of innovativeness in the project and the degree to which the project is part of a broad product program. In addition, the use of formal rewards for achieving team performance as opposed to rewards for individual achievement is investigated. Lastly, interactive controls are examined which consist of upper‐managers interacting directly with project members in the development of strategy and operational goals and procedures prior to the start of the project, and upper‐managers intervening in project decision‐making. Questionnaire data are collected on 95 projects across a variety of industries. The findings suggest that while NPD projects teams need some level of strategic direction concerning the objectives to be accomplished and the procedures to be followed, upper‐level managers can exert too much control. In particular, the findings showed a negative association between the use of upper manager‐imposed process controls and project performance. The findings also indicated that the degree to which upper‐managers intervened in project‐level decisions during the project was negatively related to project performance. However, the results showed support for the notion that early and interactive decision‐making on control mechanisms is important for effective projects. In particular, early team member and upper‐management involvement in the setting of operational controls, such as goals and procedures for monitoring and evaluating the project, was positively associated with project performance. This study provides additional insight into our understanding of upper‐management support in new product development. The study suggests that upper‐managers can over control with the wrong type of controls, and suggests effective ways of implementing participative and interactive control mechanisms.     

Managing Innovation Champions: The Impact of Project Characteristics on the Direct Manager Role*

A key challenge for organizations seeking to improve the management of innovation lies in determining when to lend direct managerial support, and how much support, to those championing such projects. This research provides insights into the connection between project characteristics and the type and frequency of direct manager involvement. As such, it addresses the following research question: how does the level of project innovativeness, strategic relatedness, and resource requirements impact the level of empowerment of innovation champions and the sponsor or supervisor role played by managers? The research method involves a survey of 89 project champions from four divisions of large, multinational Korean companies. The results show that when innovativeness was high but projects were strategically related, there was greater project champion empowerment but also a more frequent managerial sponsor role. This suggests it may be best to allow innovators, who are close to the project's markets, technologies, and industry conditions, to have greater freedom over objectives and decisions. Yet they may also need the advice and support of their managers to function optimally under the highly uncertain conditions that characterize innovative projects. This combination of empowerment and a sponsor role, though appropriate for highly innovative projects, may also require high strategic relatedness, however. On the other hand, when projects are less strategically related and when resource requirements are high, the analysis suggests managers are more likely to exert control. Managers may therefore need to become more closely involved in decision making for costly ventures representing new strategic directions for their organizations. Overall, this research suggests that both empowerment and manager roles are relevant to the management of innovation. These results offer academic value in recognizing the nature of the direct manager role under different innovation project conditions. It further reveals a need for academics to recognize both the supervisor and sponsor roles in the management of innovation. For managers, the findings suggest that for organizations to effectively develop and commercialize innovations managers need to recognize when certain projects call for different levels and types of involvement.     

Risk management, project success, and technological uncertainty

In times of increased competition and globalization, project success becomes even more critical to business performance, and yet many projects still suffer delays, overruns, and even failure. Ironically, however, risk management tools and techniques, which have been developed to improve project success, are used too little, and many still wonder how helpful they are. In this paper we present the results of an empirical study devoted to this question. Based on data collected on over 100 projects performed in Israel in a variety of industries, we examine the extent of usage of some risk management practices, such as risk identification, probabilistic risk analysis, planning for uncertainty and trade-off analysis, the difference in application across different types of projects, and their impact on various project success dimensions. Our findings suggest that risk management practices are still not widely used. Only a limited number of projects in our study have used any kind of risk management practices and many have only used some, but not all the available tools. When used, risk management practices seem to be working, and appear to be related to project success. We also found that risk management practices were more applicable to higher risk projects. The impact of risk management is mainly on better meeting time and budget goals and less on product performance and specification. In this case, we also found some differences according levels of technological uncertainty. Our conclusion is that risk management is still at its infancy and that at this time, more awareness to the application, training, tool development, and research on risk management is needed.     

From Experience: Securing Sponsors and Funding for New Product Development Projects—The Human Side of Enterprise

Gaining approval for a project requires playing a role that may be unfamiliar for many new-product development (NPD) professionals—that of salesperson. The NPD professional must sell management on the market potential of the product concept, and persuade management to commit the resources needed for transforming the concept into a marketable product. Finding a well-placed sponsor within the company's management ranks can improve the chances of obtaining approval for a project, but securing sponsorship is, in many respects, yet another sales job. Gary Tighe offers guidance for NPD professionals who must sell their projects to potential sponsors. He describes the key steps in the process of securing a sponsor, he gives guidelines for choosing the right sponsor based on the nature of the project, and he provides practical advice for developing a presentation that will gain the support of a prospective sponsor and company management. He then presents a vignette that illustrates the principles he discusses. He identifies three elements that are necessary for securing a sponsor and obtaining funding for a proposed project: clearly defining the project, its scope, and its objective; specifying how the proposed project affects the prospective sponsor and that person's organization; and detailing the project's effects on revenue, profits, cost, or output. These elements forge a strong link between project outcomes and the interests of the sponsor, the sponsor's organization, and the company as a whole. Choosing the right sponsor requires careful consideration of the project's expected effects on specific functional areas and the entire organization, the resources required, the project objectives, and time constraints. For example, senior management sponsorship is essential for projects that cut across existing organizational boundaries. After helping to ensure that projects receive adequate funding, sponsors may serve as advisers to project teams, and they may provide additional resources if a team encounters unexpected problems. Through regular progress reports and sponsor participation in team meetings, the project team can ensure the active, ongoing support of the sponsor.     

Controlling R & D projects by networks

Abstract . This paper discusses the use of network analysis in the management of a large scale engineering project carried out within the R & D department of an engineering company. It describes the use of precedence diagrams and concludes that these are simpler to use than the more commonly encountered PERT nomenclature. This method has now been extended to cover other projects in the R & D department and it is concluded that their successful introduction has been encouraged by the interest and support of top management.     

Integrating Knowledge and Knowledge Processes: A Critical Incident Study of Product Development Projects

Various scholars have argued that knowledge processes in organizations are integrally linked in practice. The extant literature though treats them separately and thereby disregards the interactions and tensions between them. A result of this way of studying knowledge processes is that little is known about their relative importance and how they work together. This paper addresses this gap in the literature through a critical incident study of knowledge processes in product development projects of high‐tech small firms. The paper starts off with a conceptual framework comprised of four knowledge processes—knowledge creation, knowledge application, knowledge integration, and knowledge retention—and their interactions. From the framework, three hypotheses are derived concerning the importance of these types of knowledge processes and their interactions, which in turn guide the empirical research. The hypotheses were tested in a retrospective study of 58 critical incidents in product development projects of 16 high‐tech small firms in the Netherlands. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews using the critical incident interviewing technique. Interviewees were asked to “relive” and describe particular successful and unsuccessful examples of product development projects in the past. The analysis of the interview data focused upon whether there are differences between successful and unsuccessful projects in the types of knowledge processes and interactions that are performed. After coding all data into the various types of knowledge processes and interactions of the framework, t‐tests were used to test for significance of differences. The findings indicate that the difference between success and failure in these projects lies primarily in the extent to which knowledge integration and integration between knowledge processes have taken place. These findings demonstrate that, of the four knowledge processes, knowledge integration had the most significant impact on product development project success. The study demonstrates furthermore that higher degrees of interactions between knowledge processes were also associated with project success. Despite the limitations of this study, these results provide empirical support for the claim that integration is a key factor in organizations in general and in innovation projects in particular. For academics, this suggests further research on knowledge integration, and integration between knowledge processes, is warranted. For practitioners, it means that integration is a key process to be considered when choosing and executing new product development projects.     

Using mean-Gini and stochastic dominance to choose project portfolios with parameter uncertainty

Although a variety of models have been studied for project portfolio selection, many organizations still struggle to choose a potentially diverse range of projects while ensuring the most beneficial results. The use of the mean-Gini framework and stochastic dominance to select portfolios of research and development (R&D) projects has been gaining attention in the literature despite the fact that such approaches do not consider uncertainty regarding the projects’ parameters. This article discusses, with relation to project portfolio selection through a mean-Gini approach and stochastic dominance, the impact of uncertainty on project parameters. In the process, Monte Carlo simulation is considered in evaluating the impact of parametric uncertainty on project selection. The results show that the influence of uncertainty is significant enough to mislead managers. A more robust selection policy using the mean-Gini approach and Monte Carlo simulation is proposed.     

The importance of a common project management method in the corporate environment

Like so many other major companies in the world today, Ericsson runs most of its product development operations as projects. The increasing complexity of telecommunication solutions often requires that many technologies are brought together in one turnkey project, such as telephone switching, mobile radio networks, DECT radio Access and others. Competence centres within Ericsson, spread out over many countries need to work together in'cross functional' projects.
While the advantage of the project concept is obvious, carrying out projects in which various Ericsson companies participate, in different countries, can prove to be a very complex undertaking. Many such projects are running simultaneously and often compete for resources and priority with ever increasing time constraints. In order to succeed we need a common methodology for managing projects.
This methodology must provide Ericsson with a shared view on how we allocate scarce (human) resources, the roles that need to be played by all those involved in the project and the supporting line functions, the criteria to be used for decisions to be taken inside the project and in relation to other projects, and many more issues that require a common view. A shared view on project management is also a prerequisite for handling conflicts within an organization in which the project, as a working form, is predominant. Various Ericsson companies and units have achieved different degrees of maturity in their management of projects. This combined experience has produced a methodology called 'PROPS' that Ericsson uses today. The widespread use of PROPS has given Ericsson a common terminology and common perspective of projects. This contributes to shorter lead-time, time to market and time to customer. In this article is explained some of the PROPS features and how PROPS is applied.     

Managing radical innovation: an overview of emergent strategy issues

Despite differences in definitions, researchers understand that radical innovation within an organization is very different from incremental innovation , and and that it is critical to the long-term success of firms. Unfortunately, research has also shown that it is often difficult to get support for radical projects in large firms [14], where internal cultures and pressures often push efforts toward more low risk, immediate reward, incremental projects. Interestingly, we know considerably less about the effective management of the product development process in the radical than in an incremental context. The purpose of this study is to explore the process of radical new product development from a strategic perspective, and to outline key observations and challenges that managers face as they move these projects to market. The findings presented here represent the results of a longitudinal (since 1995), multidisciplinary study of radical innovation projects. A multiple case study design was used to explore the similarities and differences in management practices applied to twelve radical innovation projects in ten large, established North American firms. The findings are grouped into three high-level strategic themes. The first theme, market scope, discusses the challenges associated with the pursuit of familiar versus unfamiliar markets for radical innovation. The second theme of competency management identifies and discusses strategic challenges that emerge as firms stretch themselves into new and unfamiliar territory. The final theme relates to the people issues that emerge as both individuals and the project teams themselves try to move radical projects forward in organizations that are not necessarily designed to support such uncertainty.A breadth of subtopics emerge within and across this framework relating to such ideas as risk management, product cannibalization, team composition, and the search for a divisional home. Taken together, our observations reinforce the emerging literature that shows that project teams engaging in radical innovation encounter a much different set of challenges than those typically faced by NPD teams engaged in incremental innovation.     

对建筑企业预算人员的压力管理研究

预算人员在企业投标的过程中起着较为重要的作用，预算人员所肩负的重任往往使他们承受着较大的心理压力。而过度的压力会为个人及企业带来巨额的经济损失，适当的压力管理不仅有利于个人的身心健康，更重要的是可以为企业减少因压力而带来的损失，压力管理不仅与个人的压力应对行为有关，而且与企业所给与的支持程度有关。     

How Ideation Portfolio Management Influences Front‐End Success

The front end of innovation is recognized as an important driver for successful new products and business prosperity. On the one hand, companies must generate a sufficient number and variety of high‐quality ideas to obtain a well‐balanced portfolio of potentially successful innovation projects. On the other hand, companies must strictly select and prioritize promising ideas and concepts because resource constraints do not allow for the pursuit of every idea. Therefore, companies must practice ideation portfolio management to simultaneously support the variety and selection of ideas and concepts before they enter the innovation project portfolio. To date, there is no research on how ideation portfolio management affects the performance of the front end and of the eventual project portfolio. The current study addresses this research gap in an empirical cross‐industry investigation of 175 medium‐sized and large firms in Germany using a double‐informant design. Ideation portfolio management is conceptualized with three elements: ideation strategy, process formalization, and creative encouragement. We find that all three elements independently and significantly contribute to front‐end success. The results also show that front‐end success mediates the relationship between the elements of ideation portfolio management and project portfolio success. More importantly, we find significant interaction effects between creative encouragement and process formalization and between creative encouragement and ideation strategy. The findings suggest that these elements of ideation portfolio management are complementary and should be balanced to maximize the performance of the front end and the eventual innovation project portfolio.     

Information asymmetries and technological innovation in large engineering construction projects

Research on technological innovation shows that information asymmetries between suppliers and buyers constitute a major barrier to the successful introduction of new products. Most of this research, however, puts the burden of overcoming these asymmetries on producers of new products. In the case of large engineering construction projects innovation is often the result of joint problem solving by owners, prime contractors, consultants, and equipment suppliers. In this paper we examine the relationship between innovativeness of large engineering construction projects and internal owner capabilities, degree of control over project, and dependence on external organizations, We use data on power plant construction projects to test hypotheses derived from agency and organization theories of innovation. Our results indicate that organization theories of innovation are on the whole better predictors of the impact on innovativeness of owner's capabilities and relationship to external organizations.     

Managing complex programs: a review of major research findings

Managing large-scale research and development projects is without question a difficult task. Success is often dependent on the ability of the project manager to successfully cope with a myriad of unpredictable situations. To assist project managers, the authors review several of the most significant recent research studies to identify potentially useful insights for those charged with the administration of complex research and development projects. Specifically, five areas of research are examined, namely, (1) project manager leadership styles; (2) conflict management; (3) decision-making styles; (4) organizational design considerations and project authority; and (5) the relationships of the project team with the parent, client, and other external organizations.     

规范项目工程《质量监督通报》之浅析——西气东输“南京二条管线工程”质量监督的实践与探索

针对石油天然气产建工程和长输管道工程建设分散、点多、面广、线长的特点,就工程质量监督站如何履行政府质量监督职能、加强基层项目监督机构的建设、加强责任主体各方质量管理、促进工程质量提高进行了探讨。结合石油天然气长庆工程质量监督站冀宁监督项目部承担西气东输干线和后续支线项目工程,从规范《工程质量监督通报》的角度阐述了创新质量监督工作模式在西气东输“南京二条管线工程”质量监督实践中取得的监督效果。     

Coordination at different stages of the product design process

This paper addresses the following question: how does the coordination challenge faced by managers change over the life of time bound projects such as product design. We use coordination structure, an approach to modeling organizational situations that highlights concurrent responsibility interdependencies rather than the more traditional task interdependencies. We explain coordination structure and use it to capture the responsibility interdependencies in a sample of complex system design projects drawn from two different organizations. We use this data: to illustrate the differences possible in the responsibility interdependencies that can exist within design projects from different organizations and at different project key points; to identify a set of four basic modules, or groupings, of responsibility interdependencies useful for modeling design organizations; and to generate a set of testable hypotheses on how the coordination challenge faced by project managers can vary between organizations and over project key points.     

基于并行工程的建设项目管理模式研究

所谓并行工程是指集成、并行的设计产品及其相关的各种系统方法。在建设项目管理活动中。可借鉴并行工程的思想．建立起一种基于并行工程建设项目的管理模式。并行工程管理模式将原来分别进行的工作在时间和空间上交叉，重叠。并行利用信息的相互交流来达到资源共享。在此模式下．计划和控制都是依据获取的信息进行的．构想为金字塔模型。该模式的项目进度计划从系统整体出发着重强调并行项目之问的相互协调，其编制步骤可分为项目结构分解，项目活动时间估算及计划编制。采取的主要控制方法是基于计算机项目管理信息系统，包括决策支持、物资与设备管理、质量管理、成本管理，合同管理、财务管理，客户管理，风险管理、采购管理、人力资源管理等子系统。     

Product/Market Innovations: A Study of Top Management Involvement Among Four Cultures

Over the years, many authors have stressed that successful new product development requires the support of top management. Harvey Hegarty and Richard Hoffman explore this involvement through survey data obtained from top managers employed by a cross-cultural sample of organizations. Reported influence on innovations varied by the respondents' functional specialties rather than their cultural backgrounds. However, both the use of strategic management activities and their association with influence on innovations were found to vary across cultures.     

Managing complex development projects: arenas, knowledge processes and time

The literature on project management has been dominated by techniques and methods for separating activities and making thought out plans. Closely related to this research stream is the research on product development, which seems to advocate somewhat of a different strategy where managing projects is a matter of enabling the crossing of functions and knowledge bases. This paper attempts to integrate these two lines of research.
The paper is based on two in–depth case studies of project management in product development contexts. The projects under study were highly complex and consisted of multiple interrelated parts, which called for 'tightly coupled' organizational solutions. From our point of view, much effort by the project management teams was put into establishing a project that was responsive and where participating local units were oriented toward various 'global' measures.
In our conception, the overall deadline seemed to have played an important role for promoting communal and interactive problem solving. Furthermore, the deadline emphasized the need for global arenas where the interactive problem solving could take place. It is argued that time–based controls set a global time for the project. The paper also demonstrates the importance of various global arenas, such as testing activities and project management forums, in order to keep track of time limits and to trigger global knowledge processes. Furthermore, based on the notion of 'separation' and 'coupling' of sub–systems and project phases, the paper suggests a model identifying four types of project organizations. The paper contributes to the knowledge on project management in complex product development.     

成都市政府层面重点项目管理研究

文章从成都市重点项目的确定原则、完成情况、管理机制、申报程序和保障体系等方面分析了成都市政府层面重点项目的管理现状,总结了其经验与做法,指出了信息化管理有待加强,项目关系复杂,相关单位重视度不足,工作流程和评审制度有待改进等问题.从信息化建设、公众参与和监督、保障制度、工作流程和评审制度的优化等方面提出相关建议,希望能够提高和完善成都市重点项目管理的效率,为其他省份的重点项目管理工作提供借鉴和参考.     

对工程项目管理公司的探讨

用设立项目管理公司的方法束实施对工程项目的管理，具有许多传统项目管理方法无法比拟的优点，如更有利于经验的积累，有利于资源的优化配置。然而，经营好一个项目管理公司，需要具备许多条件，有软件、硬件的要求，同时还应有与项目管理公司相配套的组织环境。