Modeling and measuring product development cycle time across industries

As global competitive pressure increases and product life cycles compress, companies are trying to shorten product development cycles. This article relates the actual length of product development cycle times (in months) for project data from 21 divisions of 11 firms in 5 industries to project, process and team structure factors with statistically significant results. The model and data quantify the impact of project newness and complexity (the number of functions a product performs) on increasing development cycle time length. The data also demonstrate how much impact using a cross-functional product development team has on decreasing cycle time. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.