Putting People First

Accelerating Projects by Encouraging Help

To keep product development projects on schedule, establishing psychological safety and promoting cooperative behavior can be just as important as good planning.

Fabian J. Sting, Christoph H. Loch and Dirk Stempfhuber

February 25, 2015

In turbulent business landscapes with rapidly changing technological platforms, many organizations are trying to accelerate product introduction cycles by prioritizing project delivery. However, many projects have two characteristics that make optimal delivery times elusive: First, the projects themselves tend to involve uncertainty (for example, they develop a new product function whose feasibility has not yet been established); and second, the workers have information ...