Projects and their challenges for new product development in the telecommunication industry

Bringing a stream of new products and new features into the market is one of the key strategies to beat the competition that has increasingly intensified since the de-regulations in the Telecommunications industry (called 'Telco' for short). There are only a few studies dedicated to New Product Development (NPD) in this hypercompetitive de-regulated industry today; our study investigates Telco NPD projects and their challenges. It has found there is no difference in terms of project challenges between the projects that develop consumer or business Telco products. Conventional project classification schemes have been examined and found not to provide clear insights. The analysis has resulted in the classification of the projects into small, and large and complex projects. The shortened technology cycles and competition in particular have been found to drive Telco companies to deliver successful NPD projects in a shorter time, and they need to ensure that their business processes support the technologies in new products without any disruption. This study highlights flexibility in applying project management processes as a major critical success factor that requires skillful and strong project managers to develop quality new products with challenging time-to-market goals.