A conceptual model of product development cycle time

By understanding the relationships between the popular acceleration techniques, the underlying intermediate processes and product development time, practitioners and academics alike will be better able to develop new techniques as well use existing ones to more effectively speed products to the market.

Abstract

Organizations across industries are facing a new competitive challenge: reducing the time required to successfully bring new products to market. Although the managerial literature cites many product development acceleration techniques, little insight is provided as to why and how these techniques are successful. In this article, we extend theory by presenting a conceptual model of product development cycle time that explains the relationships among acceleration techniques, underlying theoretical constructs and development time. The underlying constructs that we propose affect product development time are: (1) project complexity, (2) information processing capability, and (3) motivation. We propose that by understanding the relationships between the popular acceleration techniques, the underlying intermediate processes and product development time, practitioners and academics alike will be better able to develop new techniques as well use existing ones to more effectively speed products to the market.