Making a Product Development Team Flexible: The Role of Strictness of Review Process

Abstract

During the course of Product Development (PD), a product is continuously evaluated at each stage. The review process adopted for evaluating the progress can vary in terms of ‘strictness'. We explored how this strictness affects a team's ability to adapt (Team Flexibility) and perform (Efficiency) in a dynamic environment. To conduct this study, we adopted a cross-sectional research design. We surveyed 120 PD teams using the survey instrument developed for this study. Our result shows that a high degree of strictness impairs the efficiency of a team regardless of their size. The above finding implies a trade-off between flexibility and efficiency of teams (both small and large) while operating in a dynamic environment.