Paper review - project cycle time

The Effect of Project and Process Characteristics on Product Development Cycle TimeAbbie GriffinJournal of Marketing Research, Vol. 34, No. 1, Special Issue on Innovation and New Products. (Feb., 1997), pp. 24-35.The paper is based on a research which is aiming to empirically test the theories regarding the influence of complexity and newness to product development cycle time. In addition the paper examines if the use of cross functional teams and a formal product development process would influence the project performance.The data for the research is gathered from diverse type of industry and companies and complexity and newness are operationalized by measures.The paper in addition to testing the hypothesis concludesd that the application of cross functional teams in projects with high newness helps reducing product development cycle tme since these projects need more creativity and new ideas. Also the use of formal product development processes helps cycle time reduction when projects reach their physical design.

NPDP Certification

Product Development and Management Association offer a professional certification in New Product Development.
To qualify for this certificate, candidates must meet 3 criteria in EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE, and KNOWLEDGE. Visit:
http://www.pdma.org/certification/npdpform.php

Journal of "Design Studies"

The management of Engineering Design is an area not much research. In fact in the main stream management journals this subject is neglected. The journal of "Design Studies" is a useful journal in this respect. This journal publish research about many aspects of design including the managerial aspects. Could be helpful for the researchers in this area. The journal can be found at the following address:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science

"Multi-project", "Program" and "project portfolio": Are they the same?

I found that the three terms: "program", "project portfolio" and "multi-project" have large overlappings in the concepts they refer to and at the same time they are different. This is my perception of the following concepts based on the academic litrature and my experiences:

In ocnstruction industry the differences between a project and a program is well known. A program is a package of projects which all together satisfy an objective. For example the construction of the Terminal 5 in Heathrow Airport(London) is a program. It consist of many projects which may be linked or not to each other but the final objective is to provide travel services to the passengers and Airliners in the this airport.

The term "project portfolio" is mostly heard when looking to the organization from finance and from strategic perspective. There are businesses which their operations are in the form of projects. These projects are not neccessary related to each other but they all together creat revenues for the company. Imagine a company like Arup. This engineering compnay is involved in many projects around the glob which are some related and some unrelated to each other. The main discussion when it comes to project portfolio is about how to select the best projects, what combination of the projects are best for the company profitibility and the scheduling of the projects to best utilize the company capacities.

Multi-project is usually refers to the environments where different projects in a company have something in common; for example the location, the resources, the business and so on. However I admit that this term is confounding in meaning with the "project portfolio" and program. This term is usually used by the practitioners and researchers when they are talking about the projects in micro level/operations level. Usually the questions of complexity, productivity, team work problems, communication, planning and control problems are mentioned in connection to multi-project environements.

Prism Magazine

Arthur D Little (The international management consulting) publish a professional magazine which is very intresting and rich in content. The magazine is available online for free. Worth to have a look and probably find some articles of your interest.

Book: Product development- work for premium values

This a recent book from Sten Jonsson which describes the social interaction and processes in development team in Volvo Cars. An highly reliable and empirically based book.

Synopsis
This book is about how teams can keep value-driven product development together and focused in spite of complex organizational settings and changing brand values. Through good leadership, and good team spirit, large projects can maintain their dynamism if people "talk their walk" and thereby coproduce a good story - a story good enough to tell the customer. We will see, increasingly, the story of how the new car model was developed as part of marketing efforts. The brand values, embedded in the story of the heroic efforts made by the project team to accomplish this valuable product, serve as criteria when members choose what solution to propose to the design problems at hand. The good story will visualise the brand values at the same time as it stages the product. The narrative can be a management tool! Yes, we need the bureaucratic structures (target costing, cost reviews, quality assurance) to keep projects within reasonable limits, but those trappings do not create value, nor does an old specification of a product in a changing world. This book provides an implicit attack on the idea of gate systems so prevalent in the academic literature on product development.

Engineering Design Methods

This a a very short book about the engineering design and the process of the problem solving in new product development. With no mathematical approach, Nigel Cross provide a general and valuable understanding of design processes in new product development.

Karl Ulrich

The publications of Karl Ulrich are very fundamental references in NPD, see:
http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/%7Eulrich/publications.html

Paper review

Change and customisation in complex engineering domains
Claudia Eckert , P. John Clarkson and Winfried Zanker

I found the paper very valuable in terms of the precise description of the process within the selected engineering company. The case described is the Westland helicopter development. The paper is 21 pages and published in the highly accredited journal of Research in Engineering Design.
Some terminology and observations from the industry are very new and I have not seen reports about them anywhere else.
Actually I think the value in this paper is in translating and simplifying the complex issues of the engineering design world into a format and description which everyone can understand.
I am especially facinated by the concepts of Emergent Change, Initiated change, change propagation and the difffernt strategy of dealing with change as mentioned in the paper: forward redesign and backward redesign.
The paper is more a report of observation and do not come up with significant conclusions.