Impact of project complexity factors on new product development cycle time

Abstract

The aim of this paper if to investigate the factors driving project complexity in New Product Development (NPD) projects and how they impact on development cycle time. This issue has been addressed in two steps: (i) building a framework for project complexity in NPD projects, and (ii) evaluating their impact on development cycle time through a System Dynamics (SD) simulation model integrating these factors with the operational aspects of the project and its time performance The results indicate that project complexity is driven by four factors: Project Uncertainty, Product Newness, Product Interconnectivity, and Product Size. The simulation model output shows that an increase in project uncertainty has a significant impact on development cycle time. With regard to the remaining factors, they tend to impact development cycle time as they increase, however their impact is not significantly different in projects involving medium or high levels of these factors.