Interview study: Decisions and decision criteria for development in industry

Decision-making in early stages of product development affects product success essentially. For this reason, the professional handling and management of decisions in early development stages is necessary. To investigate current decision-making in industry, we conducted an interview study to quantify decision criteria, which decision makers from industry base their decisions on. Dependent on a list of decision criteria from literature, several employees from R&D departments were interviewed and the interviews were analyzed regarding decision criteria. Most important decision criteria are the financial aspect, customer requirements and product-technical feasibility. However, interviewees did not mention a few other criteria, which were mentioned in literature.