Agile Stage-Gate Hybrid Framework for New Product Development

Introduction

Since 1990, New Product Development (NPD) theory has considerably evolved distinct new practices, tools, techniques, and management frameworks (Cooper, 2019; Summers & Scherpereel, 2008). New products screening models have been developed such as a study that compared US and UK manufacturing firms and which depends on the type of product (old or new). This approach was used by Xin et al., (2008) so as to compare British and German machine tool manufacturers. This discriminating method was used in the field of NPD and especially in Phases I and II of Project SAPPHO and Project NewProd Phases I and II in order to compare new products in different industries. However, a compete 100% implementation of a product development process might be a misnomer as all processes are to be both flexible and situational so that they could match the dynamics of technologies, markets, and organizations (Biemans et al., 2015). Thus the search for appropriate NPD models or different approaches has become a new emerging topic both for scholars and practitioners resulting from the new disruptive innovation environment which has challenged NPD theory and practice in recent years (Cooper, 2017; Summers & Scherpereel, 2008).

As many companies have no formal NPD systems yet, ad hoc systems provide decision makers with too many discretion which leads to mistakes. So, some companies have opted for managing NPD within a formal system in an attempt to avoid those mistakes. Yet, a need to adapt Stage-Gate models is pointed out so that higher levels of flexibility and agility can be achieved (Conforto & Amaral, 2016; Ettlie & Elsenbach, 2007). The Stage-Gate model is the world’s most widely benchmarked, referenced and implemented innovation management model which has been used by companies of all sizes and it has adopted in many industries. This model is used in order to help companies to develop and launch successful new products. Despite the positive effects that this model had in many companies, Stage-Gate has attracted a number of criticisms. It focuses on the financial perspective of NPD process, it is rigid and linear and it cannot handle innovative projects (Cooper, 2014).

One of the latest results of these researches on NPD management is agile NPD, which has recently, in the early 10’s emerged in an attempt to manage the increasing complexity of the NPD process. The agile methods originate from the software development industry and are being increasingly adapted by research and development industrial companies, amongst others. Software development is almost infinitely divisible and consists of million lines of code that can be broken down into one hundred increments of approximately 10.000 lines, each increment yielding a working product. It is more than obvious, that physical product development is something much different. The development of a new machine for example, or a new food product, or a polymer cannot be incrementalized. In such a way, therefore the concept of short time-boxed sprints cannot be applied as well (Cooper, 2014).

Recent academic findings show that agile methods are applied within the context of existing Stage-Gate NPD models. Also, what is indicated by the findings is that NPD performance is significantly improved after the implementation though rather than replacing the existing NPD standards, the agile framework is just emerged into them (Sommer et al., 2014). But studies regarding the transformation of the product development process and the integration of agile systems in the NPD process are limited. To this view, the main research questions are: Can agile be integrated with a traditional Stage-Gate model? And can the resulting hybrid model also be used for the development of physical products? (Cooper, 2017; 2016; Cooper & Sommer, 2016).