Free Adobe Acrobat Reader David N. Ford
Department of Civil Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-3136, USA
and
John D. Sterman
Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
50 Memorial Drive, E53-351, Cambridge, MA 02142 USA
Successfully implementing concurrent development has proven difficult
for many organizations. However, many theories
addressing concurrent development treat either technical aspects of the development
process (e.g., precedence relationships) or behavioral issues (e.g., creating
effective cross-functional teams), but not their linkages. We argue that much
of the complexity of concurrent development—and the implementation failures
that plague many organizations—arises from interactions between the technical
and behavioral dimensions. We use a dynamic project model that explicitly represents
these interactions to investigate how a ‘‘Liar’s Club’’—concealing
known rework requirements from managers and colleagues—can aggravate the
‘‘90% syndrome,’’ a common form of schedule failure,
and disproportionately degrade schedule performance and project quality. We
discuss the role of the incentives on and behavior of engineers and
managers in concurrent development failure and explore policies to improve project
performance.
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