TRANSFORMING NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Despite general agreement that team product development is the desired path to rapid time-to-market, most organizations have neither the cul ture not the infrastructure to support a team-based system. As an alte rnative to changing the whole company, managers have the more fruitful option of taking achievable steps to change the most important proces ses and attitudes around them that can make teams work effectively. Th e author suggests emulating nine consistent behaviors of successful wo rld-class product development firms observed at Battelle. These can be implemented by taking actions in five specific areas: concurrent engi neering, roles and organizations, software development, project perfor mance tracking, and change management. for those whose time horizon is barely beyond 24 hours, a six-step initial action recipe is also prov ided.