Success factors in product development projects: Expert opinions

Abstract

Successful product development is a common challenge for technical and management experts. The increasing pressure on time reduction and cost savings while enhancing product features, requires rethinking project management methods. This paper analyses the opinions of product development experts about the success factors of product development projects. A voluntary online survey was used for data collection in 2020. The study confirms that development engineers, test engineers, project managers, and product development managers have partially different approaches to important success factors. Precise regulation and focus on collaboration are considered essential topics. The results show that knowledge management and collaboration with other organizational units must be improved. Enhancing the interpretation of project success and forcing the better utilization of lessons learned or module information can contribute to sustainable success.