The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

36.4. Summary

This PDMA best practices research dates to 1990 and draws on research conducted even earlier by Booz, Allen & Hamilton. This survey benefits from being able to benchmark against the previous results, but it also has been expanded to include current topics such as collaboration, portfolio management, team, and leadership issues between teams and over time, and a broader inclusion of tools and methodologies that support product development. This is a descriptive survey, and we need to be careful not to draw inappropriate conclusions. That said, what conclusions can we draw from these data?

1. First, and not to be discounted, the PDMA membership cares deeply about new product development. The time taken to complete this survey (30-60 minutes per respondent) and the response rate achieved among the membership is admirable.

2. Firms have come a long way, but can still learn from current processes, successes, and failure, and from each other.

   • 80 percent of respondents have a formal product development process. Given that these respondents are primarily PDMA members, those numbers are probably higher than those of the general population, but indicative of a general trend. Those firms that have achieved this very necessary first step can now focus on making this process more flexible— knowing when they can skip gates, have overlapping gates, use conditional decisions, and making sure they do not let their process get stale.

   • 77 percent of these respondents have a specific strategy ...