Managing product development collaborations—a process maturity approach

Abstract

Product development collaborations present additional challenges over purely in-house projects, yet are an increasingly common feature of the new product introduction (NPI) process. This paper introduces the notion of collaborative maturity as a tool to examine the issues confronting firms that outsource a significant amount of design or development activity to a third party, with the aim of providing guidance to managers involved in collaborative projects. Drawing from literature and insights gained from case studies of twelve collaborative development projects involving United Kingdom small- to medium-sized enterprises, a framework is proposed that sets collaboration in the context of task partitioning within the NPI process, on the one hand, and the development and lifecycle of a partnering relationship, on the other. A collaboration maturity grid (CMG) describes each of the following key process areas at four levels of maturity: collaboration strategy, structured development process, system design and task partitioning, partner selection, project initiation, partnership management and partnership development. The grids are incorporated in a workbook (along with a lifecycle scenario tool, checklist and audit questionnaire) that has been tested in six companies.