Characteristics and Enablers of Transparency in Product Development Organizations

Risks in product development lead to schedule and cost overruns and poor product quality. While many risk management frameworks have been published and research on specific practices has been conducted, little is understood of key characteristics of successful risk management in product development...

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Main Authors: Shaffer, Ryan M., Olechowski, Alison Louise, Seering, Warren, Ben-Daya, Mohammad
Format: Working Paper
Language:en_US
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97646
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author Shaffer, Ryan M.
Olechowski, Alison Louise
Seering, Warren
Ben-Daya, Mohammad
author_facet Shaffer, Ryan M.
Olechowski, Alison Louise
Seering, Warren
Ben-Daya, Mohammad
author_sort Shaffer, Ryan M.
collection MIT
description Risks in product development lead to schedule and cost overruns and poor product quality. While many risk management frameworks have been published and research on specific practices has been conducted, little is understood of key characteristics of successful risk management in product development and how they manifest in real development projects. This research consists of two phases. The first phase is a survey on 171 best practices in risk management. Analysis of over 200 responses from industry practitioners identified transparency as a key characteristic of successful risk management in product development. Due to the limited exploration of the concept of transparency in the literature, the second phase of this work consisted of a qualitative investigation of transparency through interviews with 15 industry practitioners. Analysis of the interview results suggests a hierarchical structure which decomposes transparency into several characteristics and identifies enablers for each of these characteristics. We propose that transparency can be a valuable lever for product developers and managers. Future work is needed to validate the generalizability of the observations provided.
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spelling mit-1721.1/976462019-04-12T12:44:54Z Characteristics and Enablers of Transparency in Product Development Organizations Shaffer, Ryan M. Olechowski, Alison Louise Seering, Warren Ben-Daya, Mohammad Risks in product development lead to schedule and cost overruns and poor product quality. While many risk management frameworks have been published and research on specific practices has been conducted, little is understood of key characteristics of successful risk management in product development and how they manifest in real development projects. This research consists of two phases. The first phase is a survey on 171 best practices in risk management. Analysis of over 200 responses from industry practitioners identified transparency as a key characteristic of successful risk management in product development. Due to the limited exploration of the concept of transparency in the literature, the second phase of this work consisted of a qualitative investigation of transparency through interviews with 15 industry practitioners. Analysis of the interview results suggests a hierarchical structure which decomposes transparency into several characteristics and identifies enablers for each of these characteristics. We propose that transparency can be a valuable lever for product developers and managers. Future work is needed to validate the generalizability of the observations provided. 2015-07-02T16:10:33Z 2015-07-02T16:10:33Z 2015-01-04 Working Paper http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97646 en_US ESD Working Papers;ESD-WP-2015-06 application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division
spellingShingle Shaffer, Ryan M.
Olechowski, Alison Louise
Seering, Warren
Ben-Daya, Mohammad
Characteristics and Enablers of Transparency in Product Development Organizations
title Characteristics and Enablers of Transparency in Product Development Organizations
title_full Characteristics and Enablers of Transparency in Product Development Organizations
title_fullStr Characteristics and Enablers of Transparency in Product Development Organizations
title_full_unstemmed Characteristics and Enablers of Transparency in Product Development Organizations
title_short Characteristics and Enablers of Transparency in Product Development Organizations
title_sort characteristics and enablers of transparency in product development organizations
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97646
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