Tentafrågor

Question 1

What is the objective of a technology strategy and which areas does it usually address?

Answer 1

The objective of a technology strategy is to guide the firm in acquiring, developing and applying technology for competitive advantage, efficiency, and overall performance. In a technology strategy the following topics should be included:
- Focus
- Source
- Timing and frequency of implementation

Question 2

Discuss five reasons why it can be beneficial to bring competitive products to the market more rapidly than competitors

Answer 2

• Enjoy a longer product life
• Faster bay-back time
• Faster use of emerging new technologies
• Set a higher market price
• Set the market price
• Market capture
• Head start on next developing cycle and derivatives
• Faster react to evolving market demands
• Enjoy scale effects
• Establish industry standards
• First-Mover Advantage

Question 3

What are the goals with project portfolio management and what methods and tools can you use in order to achieve these goals?

Answer 3

Project portfolio management refers to a company’s capability to manage its portfolio of projects in order to achieve maximum return on investment. The goals with PPM are:
- Maximized value of portfolio
- Balance of portfolio
- Strong link to business strategy

The tools are:
- Scoring models
- Bubble diagrams
- Top-down e.g. strategic buckets

Question 4

Wheelright and Clark classify development projects into different categories or types. Which are these and what is the primary distinguishing dimension?

Answer 4

• Research and advanced development projects
• Breakthrough or Radical development projects
• Platform or next generation development projects
• Derivative development projects
• Alliance or partnered projects

Question 5

Managing R&D is really much about management of dilemmas. Describe three typical managerial dilemmas or “trade-offs” that commonly need to be handled by R&D managers

Answer 5

• How to balance time, cost and quality
• The moving target
• Problem solving delays
• Unexpected technical problems
• Rapid technology shifts
• How to plan your resources of time
• Mismatches between functions
• Lack of product distinctiveness
• Unresolved policy issues

Question 6

Traditionally functionally organized structures have a tendency to develop barriers to the necessary cooperation and integration between the functions. What are the these barriers?

Answer 6

• Competence
• Culture
• Status
• Time pressure
• Geographical distance
• Goals
• Information availability
• Organization affiliation

Question 7

What integration mechanism can organizations use in order to overcome “these” barriers?

Answer 7

These is organizational and lateral mechanisms:
Organizational:
- Hierarchical authority
- Rules, programs & procedures
- Planning & goal setting
- Narrowing span of control

Lateral mechanisms/processes (between functions):
- Direct contact
- Liaison rules
- Integrating roles
- Task forces (temporary problem solving groups)
- Cross-functional teams
- Matrix design

Question 8

W&C describe four different communication patterns as critical elements of cross-functional integration. Relate these communication patterns to the four modes of upstream and downstream interaction proposed by the authors

Answer 8

The four communication patterns are:
- Richness of media
- Frequency
- Direction
- Timing

And the four modes of upstream and downstream interaction are:
- Mode 1 - Serial mode
- Mode 2 - “Early start in the dark’’
- Mode 3 - Early involvement
- Mode 4 - Integrated problem solving

Question 9

What is QFD and DFA and when in a generic product development process, can these methods come to play?

Answer 9

• QFD is also called the house of quality. It is a formalized method of matching the expressed needs of the customers to the features and functions of the product. It is a way to translate customer requirements to design requirements where you identify important correlations between these in order to focus on those design requirements that are most important to the voice of the customer. You also compare or benchmark these requirements with competitor products in order to set relevant target values on the design requirements.
• QFD is used during the requirement definition, concept development, detailed product design and detailed process design, that is, the whole design process.
• The main aim with DFA is to minimize the number of parts. You do that by answering three important questions in order to identify candidates for elimination or integration. The inspection is done in two steps, for handling and then insertion. The needed data is collected from two worksheets.
• DFA is used during the concept development, detailed product design and detailed process design

Question 10

Explain the “design-build-test-cycle” and illustrate where the two methods: DFA and QFD can come to play in this cycle.

Answer 10

The design-build-test cycle is a structured and iterative process commonly used in product development. The method emphasizes the iterative and learning aspects of the process. The process consists of the following stages:
- Design
- Build
- Test

As mentioned the cycle is iterative which means that when all the stages are done the results are evaluated and then the process often returns to the design phase to incorporate design modifications and improvements.
DFA can be used during the Build phase.
QFD can be used early in the design phase.

Question 11

The development process is a complex set of activities that extends over a considerable time period. Describe the six basic elements in the framework, presented by W&C, senior management can use for understanding that complexity. Which are the basic approaches for building and enhancement of the development capability proposed by the authors?

Answer 11

1. Project definition
2. Project organization
3. Projects management and leadership
4. Problem solving, testing, prototyping
5. Senior management review and control
6. Real-time/midcourse corrections

• The basic approaches for building and enhancement of the development capability proposed by the authors are: the organization must have an effective way of defining products, must understand and appropriately deploy the mechanisms and tools for problem solving and must understand and effectively deal with the issues involved in senior management review and control. The elements must also fit well together in order to create a coherent system and the system must be well matched to the development challenges it faces.

Question 12

What is a development funnel?

Answer 12

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Question 13

Discuss the two basic alternative models of development funnels as described by W&C with respect to their dimensions of choice

Answer 13

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Question 14

What is the purpose of creating an aggregate project plan and discuss some issues managers must confront in developing such a plan

Answer 14

All firms have a set of projects that are on the active list which means projects that have been started and not yet killed or completed. Relatively few firms arrive at such a list through a systematic process of review and decisions about what the set ought to be. The aggregate project plan has several functions and offers firms that develop and use it several advantages. As a starting point, the plan specifies the types of mix of projects that the firm plans to undertake over the planning horizon. Laying the plan explicitly makes it possible to balance the demands of individual projects for critical development resources with existing capacity. In technology-intensive environments, for example, it is crucial to make sure that the demands for scarce engineering talent balance appropriately with the number of engineers available.

These are some issues that managers must confront in developing such a plan:
- To not overcommit development resources
- To not react to near-term pressures
- To not fail to realize the strategic potential in new technology or markets
- Deciding which projects to undertake
- Killing and postponing projects

Question 15

What is the primary purpose with an Aggregate project plan and what does it show?

Answer 15

The primary purpose with an aggregate project plan is choosing the mix of projects, defining the sequence and creating the projects to support and raise crucial questions about how product and process development ought to be linked to the firm’s competitive opportunities and challenges.

Question 16

Describe the steps W&C purpose on how to develop an aggregate project plan

Answer 16

• Step 1 - Define the projects that are to be covered
• Step 2 - Define for a representative project of each type the critical resources and cycle time for its complete development
• Step 3 - Identify the existing resources available for development efforts and currently active projects, with their requirements for completion
• Step 4 - Compute the capacity utilization implied by the results of step 3
• Step 5 - Establish the desired future mix of projects by type
• Step 6 - Estimate the number of projects of each type that can be undertaken concurrently with existing resources
• Step 7 - Decide which projects to undertake
• Step 8 - Determine and integrate into the project plan changes required to improve development performance over time

Question 17

Discuss the fundamental principles behind the stage-gate process idea

Answer 17

The principle of the stage-gate process is basically to fund the project gradually as the project delivers and fulfills stated targets at different gates. The idea is to break the product development process into a series of stages where each stage is predicted by a gate. A gate = decision points or GO/KILL points. Each gate opens or closes the road for the project to move on to the next stage. The gates are the quality control check points in the process.

Question 18

What defines a heavyweight team?

Answer 18

• Members are collocated with the project manager
• Manager is typically senior and has significant authority to command resources and evaluate members
• Often still temporary, but core team members often dedicated full-time to project
• Likely to be appropriate for platform projects

A strong leader exerts direct, integrating influence across all functions. The heavyweight project manager has direct access to and responsibility for the work of those involved in the project. These project leaders are senior managers within the organization, meaning they have expertise and experience but also wield significant organizational clout. The project leader also has primary influence over the people working on the development effort and supervises their work directly through key functional people on the core teams. Often the core group is dedicated and physically co-located with the project leader.

Question 19

What is the aim/purpose and content in a heavyweight team contract book?

Answer 19

• Estimates of resources required
• Development time schedule
• Results that will be achieved
• Team members sign contract book; helps to establish commitment and sense of ownership over project
• Defines in detail the basic plan to achieve goals laid out in the charter
• It provides a tool for monitoring and evaluating the team performance

Question 20

Describe - not list - 5 different ways to source needed technology. Which of these is most commonly used by companies?

Answer 20

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Question 21

What is a “dominant design” and when/how does it emerge?

Answer 21

• A dominant design is the one design that wins allegiance in the market place. It is the design that meets the requirements of many classes of users and in which numerous product features are implicit.
• A technology with a large installed base attracts developers of complementary goods; a technology with a wide range of complementary goods attracts users, increasing the installed base. This becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

Question 22

In lean product development, the notion of waste can be expressed in terms of “knowledge waste” which can be divided into three categories. Explain the rationale behind the expression “knowledge waste” and give three examples of a knowledge waste; one form each category.

Answer 22

In lean product development the concept of knowledge waste refers to the inefficient use of knowledge, information or resources during the product development process. Knowledge waste is about identifying and addressing inefficiencies related to the acquisition, utilization and management of information and insights. The three knowledge waste categories are:
- Knowledge waste
- Missing knowledge
- Inaccessible knowledge

Question 23

In “Lean product development” there is a clear distinction between the “knowledge value stream” and the “product value stream”. What does it mean, what is the difference between these two?

Answer 23

• The knowledge value stream: To capture and reuse knowledge (markets, customers, technologies, product & manufacturing capabilities.
• Product value stream: The flow of tasks, people and the equipment that create the drawings, BOM and manufacturing process for a product.

Question 24

Discussions about platforms are often related to the re-use of physical components. But a platform can be many other things also. Describe three other views (except for components) of what a platform is, and the benefits to gain from each of these three views

Answer 24

A platform is a collection of assets that are shared by a set of products. (Standardization of assets = platform strategy)
- Components platforms
- Process platforms
- Knowledge platforms
- People and relationships platforms

Question 25

What is the underlying thinking about the “stage-gate process” set-up?

Answer 25

To fund the project gradually as the project delivers and fulfills stated targets at different gates.

Question 26

What is the difference between a “stage-gate” and a “milestone”?

Answer 26

The stage-gate is the meeting where the project reports to the Steering committee, the Milestone meeting is a preceding meeting at R&D to make sure that the project should meet the targets at the stage-gate meeting.

Question 27

Who is reporting at a stage gate meeting?

Answer 27

The project leader is reporting at the stage gate meeting.

Question 28

Who is usually the “key decision maker” at a stage-gate meeting?

Answer 28

The project sponsor, a member of the steering committee, also the result owner, is the key decision maker regarding the project.

Question 29

Where, organizationally, does usually this decision maker come from?

Answer 29

The project sponsor usually comes from a business unit or the market unit, hence the owner of the result.

Question 30

Organizationel Design by Jay Galbraith describes the need for creation of lateral relations in an organization in order to increase the capacity to process information. However, before this need for lateral relations emerges, organisations use other forms of integration mechanisms in order to achieve unity among different actors/functions. Describe these basic organizational mechanisms.

Answer 30

The basic organizational mechanisms are:
- Use the hierarchy, hence, transfer the problem to the manager in charge.
- Set up rules and procedures regarding how and what to do in specific situations.
- Guide the organization through planning and goal setting in case the situation is outside the “rule book”.
- Narrow the span-of-control, decrease the number of subordinates each manager needs to manage.