Project management in product development: Toward a framework for targeted flexibility

As a discipline, project management has been accused of having lost its relevance for innovative initiatives because it emphasizes planning and control over the flexibility and learning-based strategies that are needed to succeed under uncertainty. Several authors therefore recommend adaptive project management practices - sometimes named “targeted flexibility” - that respond to project characteristics commonly found in innovation, namely novelty, complexity, speed and - as a result - uncertainty. This paper investigates how this proposed adaptation of project management occurs in a context with high levels of novelty that organizes work in projects and needs to accommodate projects of different pace, complexity and innovativeness: product development in small and medium enterprises that do research and development work in the same organizational unit. Results of a literature review and two exploratory studies, covering a total of 8 companies with multiple projects each, are presented. Implications for a future framework for targeted flexibility are developed, leading to the identification of the following needs for project management: (1) better understanding of the many ways in which project management impacts exploration and exploitation activities, (2) improved attention for the currently poorly supported pre-project and early initiation stages, (3) a shift of focus from monitoring against plans toward monitoring against achieved learning, and (4) the formulation of transition paths from current new product development practice to higher project management maturity.