Agile New Product Development in Not-Purely Software Projects

Abstract

In Agile new product development, the product is incrementally and iteratively developed involving the customer and cross-functional teams. As manufacturing companies increasingly face challenges with sequential processes in uncertain and fast changing conditions, Agile practices taken from software development have experienced traction. Although multiple isolated case studies exist, there is a gap between academic literature and industry practice regarding cross-industry implementations and the required adaption of Agile practices to the hardware context. This research aims to bridge that gap by focusing on when and how manufacturing companies use Agile practices in their new product development.