A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF GLOBALLY DISTRIBUTED DESIGN TEAMS: THE IMPACTS ON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Globally distributing design teams during Product Development is increasingly common across a wide range of industries. Factors impacting the success such as communication, documentation and maintaining a common vision are intensified in comparison to when design teams are co-located. Much of the research towards the impacts on the Product Development process in distributed design teams consists of interviews and observations of short design sessions, with few observational studies focusing on the whole process of Product Development. With the results from a longitudinal observational study and interviews with key members of a project team, this paper investigates the factors impacting the success of Product Development when teams are distributed globally, from the early planning and development phase through to the final testing and refinement. The results indicate an increased requirement for project control strategies during the early phases of Product development to ensure a common vision is maintained throughout the phases of Product Development.