Project management for the development of new products

Abstract

New product development (NPD) projects are difficult to manage because of the subjectivity of the customer requirements, the inter-dependencies between different parts of the solution, and the subjective nature of personal and collective innovation. This chapter describes the NPD life cycle and how it may be managed. A systems perspective is applied. This describes the processes of identifying the desired product functionality, assessing feasibility (and terminating the project if necessary), and how to manage the NPD team.