Managing Product Development Teams Effectively Roger Th. A. J. Leenders, Jan Kratzer, Jan Hollander, and Jo M. L. van Engelen Multifunctional teams have become commonplace. Most companies today rou- tinely form multifunctional teams, whether they call them that or not. Espe- cially in more innovative projects, four out of five use multifunctional teams (Griffin 1997). Over the last two decades teams have become part of our man- agerial vocabulary and are now viewed as a central organizational building block. The results are often reported to be astounding. Unfortunately, the sto- ries to the contrary are equally numerous. Who hasn't seen NPD projects gone sour because the marketing and R&D professionals couldn't—or wouldn't— work together well? How many NPD projects have you been part of in which information didn't travel smoothly and swiftly among the team members? Chances are it's more than you care to remember. In fact, every story of team success is contrasted by an equally profound story of failure. Managing NPD teams isn't easy; managing multifunctional NPD teams is even harder. Not only do they change the NPD process and call for different instruments for evalua- tion, support, and control, but they also require different management skills. No longer is a team manager's effectiveness judged by his or her ability to pilot the bureaucratic labyrinth of formal channels and vertical lines of authority. Rather, effectiveness is now judged by his or her ability to put together and run individual teams and networks of teams. Of all the tasks required of a team manager, perhaps the most intricate challenge is in the coordination of multifunctional teams. Daunting as the task may be, there are some simple principles that have proved highly effective in managing NPD teams to higher performance. High-performing teams aren't enough to create high overall NPD results in your company. But good teams have been shown to be a precondition, both directly and indirectly, to the suc- cess of your NPD efforts. Moreover, a failing team is a surefire way to kill any project, regardless of how promising it might have been. The tools we present in this chapter can increase team performance and spot and predict poor per- formance; when they are used in conjunction with the many other tools dis- cussed in this volume, you have available a comprehensive palette of tools that 141