Teaching Chapter 2: Development Processes and Organizations
Timing
We generally cover the material in this chapter by inserting it in several other sessions rather than by devoting an entire session to it. The development processes portion of this material is best covered in the first week of the course. A discussion of development processes in general fits nicely with an overview of the development process the students will use to complete their projects. The material on organizations can either be covered at the same time or can be deferred until later in the course, when it can be discussed along with topics related to project management.
Objectives and Strategy
Students should be able to answer the following questions:
These issues are covered thoroughly by the chapter and are not extremely subtle to begin with. As a result, the best strategy for presenting this information may be to assign the reading and then not devote a lot of time to it in class. This is especially true for courses within management schools. The material will be unfamiliar to most engineering students and so may deserve more class time in engineering settings. Issues of how to actually manage a product development team within different types of organizations are more substantive, but will more likely be addressed in the sessions on project management.
Another approach to covering this material in class would be to use a case discussion. The Product Development at Dell Computer Company case from Harvard Business School would be appropriate in that it involves the introduction of a stage-gate process at Dell and the associated strengths and weakness of this method.
Session Outline
Product Development Processes
We usually present this material in the course introduction. Review variants on generic process: technology-push, process-intensive, customization. Perhaps bring example products representing each type. The instructor may also wish to show the students some company documentation of a product development process to reinforce the fact that such processes are not inventions of professors, but in fact are widely used by companies.
Discuss how advanced development (technology development, research) are related to the overall development process. Clark and Wheelwright devote a substantial portion of their book (Revolutionizing Product Development) to where projects come from and to how the advanced development activity can be best merged with product development. Some of this material would make a good supplement to this discussion.
Teams
Review different organizational forms by displaying and discussing Exhibit 2-7.
Discuss how to overcome some of the limitations of functional and project organizations. These issues are listed in Exhibit 2-8. Once the students recognize the limitations of the functional and project organizations they are often quite creative in generating ideas for ways to address these weaknesses in practice. Because the trend in industrial practice is away from functional organizations and toward project organizations, the discussion is often more fruitfully focused on how to overcome some of the weaknesses of project organizations and how to make the matrix organizations work.
Props
The instructor may wish to bring some products representing the results of each of the variants on the generic process (products resulting from market-pull, technology-push, process-intensive, and customization processes).
In-Class Exercise
None.
Supplemental Reading
The material on the development funnel (Chapter 5) and on heavyweight project management (Chapter 8) in Revolutionizing Product Development by Wheelwright and Clark would make good supplemental reading for this session. In addition, Cooper's book Winning at New Productsdescribes the generic stage-gate product development process.
We generally cover the material in this chapter by inserting it in several other sessions rather than by devoting an entire session to it. The development processes portion of this material is best covered in the first week of the course. A discussion of development processes in general fits nicely with an overview of the development process the students will use to complete their projects. The material on organizations can either be covered at the same time or can be deferred until later in the course, when it can be discussed along with topics related to project management.
Objectives and Strategy
Students should be able to answer the following questions:
- What are the different functions in a product development organization and what do they do?
- What does a generic product development process look like?
- What process variants exist?
- Why is a process important?
- How can the project-team structure be mapped onto the overall product development organization of the firm?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of different organizational forms?
These issues are covered thoroughly by the chapter and are not extremely subtle to begin with. As a result, the best strategy for presenting this information may be to assign the reading and then not devote a lot of time to it in class. This is especially true for courses within management schools. The material will be unfamiliar to most engineering students and so may deserve more class time in engineering settings. Issues of how to actually manage a product development team within different types of organizations are more substantive, but will more likely be addressed in the sessions on project management.
Another approach to covering this material in class would be to use a case discussion. The Product Development at Dell Computer Company case from Harvard Business School would be appropriate in that it involves the introduction of a stage-gate process at Dell and the associated strengths and weakness of this method.
Session Outline
Product Development Processes
- Show generic process and concept development phase (Exhibits 2-2 and 2-3).
- Explain several variant product development processes (Exhibits 2-4 and 2-5).
- Show the process to be used in the course projects.
- Superimpose the course project assignment due dates on the process.
We usually present this material in the course introduction. Review variants on generic process: technology-push, process-intensive, customization. Perhaps bring example products representing each type. The instructor may also wish to show the students some company documentation of a product development process to reinforce the fact that such processes are not inventions of professors, but in fact are widely used by companies.
Discuss how advanced development (technology development, research) are related to the overall development process. Clark and Wheelwright devote a substantial portion of their book (Revolutionizing Product Development) to where projects come from and to how the advanced development activity can be best merged with product development. Some of this material would make a good supplement to this discussion.
Teams
- What makes a set of individuals a product development team?
- How does a team fit within an organization?
Review different organizational forms by displaying and discussing Exhibit 2-7.
Discuss how to overcome some of the limitations of functional and project organizations. These issues are listed in Exhibit 2-8. Once the students recognize the limitations of the functional and project organizations they are often quite creative in generating ideas for ways to address these weaknesses in practice. Because the trend in industrial practice is away from functional organizations and toward project organizations, the discussion is often more fruitfully focused on how to overcome some of the weaknesses of project organizations and how to make the matrix organizations work.
Props
The instructor may wish to bring some products representing the results of each of the variants on the generic process (products resulting from market-pull, technology-push, process-intensive, and customization processes).
In-Class Exercise
None.
Supplemental Reading
The material on the development funnel (Chapter 5) and on heavyweight project management (Chapter 8) in Revolutionizing Product Development by Wheelwright and Clark would make good supplemental reading for this session. In addition, Cooper's book Winning at New Productsdescribes the generic stage-gate product development process.