6.4.2 Product development manager's decisions

The product development manager, the person responsible for the product development programme, also has decisions to make. He or she is responsible for the administrative framework of the product development programme, deciding on the activities, the schedules and the budgets, and most important the integration of different product development projects that are running in parallel. He or she decides on the workload forecasts, the standard of product development performance of the team and individuals, the efficiency expected of the PD Process (Gruenwald, 1988).

In particular, a product development manager has to decide how and when to involve the company's functional groups in the PD Process, and very importantly how the consumer needs are related to the product. The product development manager leads the coordination between the consumers and the development team, and helps the project leaders to integrate technical and business perspectives. He or she is responsible for the development of new skills and knowledge, as well as bringing in outside consultants and other sources of knowledge (Burgelman and Maidique, 1988). Some important decisions of the product development manager in Stage 1: Product strategy development are:

     aim, outcomes and constraints for the individual projects;

     depth of activity in developing the product concept and the product
        design specifications;

     accuracy needed in the market predictions;

     amount of product design and other technical development;

     time schedule for the activities;

     resources available for each of the activities;

     involvement of the functional departments in developing and evaluating
        the product concept and the product design specifications, and in
        predicting the market and technical success;

     communication methods with the team members and among them;

     recognition of lack of skills and knowledge for the later stages and planning
        of involvement of outside knowledge sources and of education of
        team members.

The product development manager has to decide how to produce the outcomes for Stage 1, but has also to look ahead to later stages so that the necessary basis for them is laid during this stage. The later stages have similar types of decisions and these become more complex as the costs of the development and the opportunity for a large failure increase.

It is very important that the product development manager ensures that decisions by the top management and by the project leaders are made at the right time. Otherwise the project can lose its urgency and the time to market extends. It is important when technical and marketing decisions are proving difficult that resources are organised by the product development manager to solve the problems without delay.