Based on a sample of 448 projects, the interactions between three planning variables, the Quality of Planning, Goal changes, Plan changes and Project Success are analyzed. The most important result of the study is that the amount of changes during a project’s implementation stands out as the only variable that distinguishes between successful and failed projects independent of their level of innovativeness. The study also reveals the interaction structure between the planning variables themselves and the resultant impact on project success, as well as several contextual variables, which affect the quality of planning and stimulate goal and plan changes. Keywords: Project planning, project success, goal changes, plan changes

Given the crucial role of process modeling in product development (PD) project management research and practice, and the variety of models proposed in the literature, a survey of the PD process modeling literature is timely and valuable. In this work, we focus on the activity network-based process models that support PD project management and present a comprehensive survey of the literature published in the last decade. To organize our survey, we use a framework based on the

The term innovation resonates broadly in the cyberspace, books, and journals. A careful analysis of the literature indicates that the knowledge of the underlying science of innovation is limited. Innovation in any domain can be enhanced by principles and insights from different disciplines. However, the process of identifying the linkages between the diverse disciplines and the target domain is not well understood. The innovation process and conditions triggering innovation set the stage for economic progress. The ideas outlined in the paper provide a roadmap for future discovery of innovation science. 1.

Firms faced with a portfolio of inconsistent design tasks often fail to get the best out of their investment in product design efforts. We present the concept of design focus as a strategic alternative for gaining competitive advantage through product design. The concept is based on the premise that design task homogeneity facilitates effective information processing and efficient utilization of R&D resources. It induces faster learning, which leads to substantial gain in an organization’s competence in dealing with product development challenges. In addition, a focused design strategy benefits from the advantages of managing a smaller portfolio. Design focus is an extension of the concept of focus from the business strategy literature to the new product development literature and it is complementary to the concept of manufacturing and marketing focus. A cross sectional study of forty-four new product development projects provides preliminary empirical evidence supporting the proposed concept, and emphasizes the need for further investigation design focus as a strategic alternative for managing product design. The concept provides a fresh perspective on the management of product design and opens up new directions for future research.

Drawing on a grounded theory research we present a model of organizational improvisation which asserts that this phenomenon is triggered by an unexpected important event brought about by a moderate level of turbulence, relying on a minimal structure and simple resources. The success of improvisation is shown to be affected by the level of equivocality and by the perceived level of task complexity, and results in increased group cohesiveness and faster and less costly future actions. We then argue in favor of a contingency view of organizational improvisation and contend that our model suggests the possibility of a dialectical approach to organizational improvisation. 2

Regular Paper This paper provides a foundation for modeling the set of activities and their relationships by which systems are engineered, or, more broadly, by which products and services are developed. It provides background, motivations, and formal definitions for process modeling in this specialized environment. We treat the process itself as a kind of system that can be engineered. However, while product systems must be created, the process systems for developing complex products must, to a greater extent, be discovered and induced. Then, they tend to be reused, either formally as standard processes, or informally by the workforce. We distinguish and clarify several important concepts in modeling processes, including: product development versus repetitive business processes, descriptive versus prescriptive processes, activities as actions versus deliverables as interactions, standard versus deployed processes, centralized versus decentralized process modeling, “as is ” versus “to be ” process modeling, and multiple phases in product development. We also present a basically simple yet highly extendable and generalized framework for modeling product development processes. The framework enables building a single model to support a variety of purposes, including project planning (scheduling, budgeting, resource loading, and risk management) and control, and it provides the scaffolding for knowledge management and organizational

Using recent empirical studies, we formulate a general framework of the hierarchical control processes needed for managing a new product development (NPD) project with a high technological uncertainty, under tight time constraints. Considering the project delivery time and resources as given, the project and its control are organized to solve the uncertainty in the new product specifications through repeated internal adjustments and interactions with customers. Our framework integrates the uncertainty regarding both the market requirements and technological uncertainties. They lead to the addition/deletion of design tasks, and to a stochastic solving time of the design tasks. The paper contributes to the area of NPD work organization models, and to the development of management-related NPD project control concepts, both areas presenting research opportunities according to Brown, Eisenhardt (1995).

An empirical research on the relationships between software product management and software project management