EXPLORING A DECISION-MAKING FORUM IN EARLY PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Decision-making in early phases of product development is of great importance due to the large impact these decisions have on the subsequent project, whilst at the same time being heavily characterized by uncertainty. This paper explores decision-making in early phases of product development, and reports empirical findings from a case study conducted in an automotive firm. The case study investigated a project meeting officially responsible for deciding the technical content of the product. It was found that defining working assumptions and asking questions were used as means to reduce uncertainty in the decision-making process, where three genres of questions were identified: elucidating, self-enlightening and argumentative. Further, a number of challenges in managing the decision-making process were identified, specifically for such agenda-based meetings as the ones investigated. These meetings were found to rely on instant interactions between the participants. For example, project management instantly has to judge whether to widen or limit the problem discussed, or whether to continue probing a problem or stop the discussion in order to protect the total meeting agenda.