Title: Who has the development process in his hands?

Authors: Francesca Montagna; Marco Cantamessa

Addresses: Department of Management and Production Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy ' Department of Management and Production Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy

Abstract: In literature, many contributions discuss the importance of 'Process Owners' in business processes. This issue is highly relevant to product development, this often being the most strategically important, but also the most highly dispersed and knowledge-intensive process found in companies. Despite the relevance attributed to this role, few authors discuss the problem of identifying to whom the responsibility of Process Ownership should be given. The paper provides an approach, inspired by multiple-issue actor analysis methodologies, which supports a rigorous identification of the Process Owner by evaluating candidate actors' consistency with process goals, their influence on the process, and their negotiating power. Then the paper presents the application of this approach to the product development process in an Italian aerospace company.

Keywords: process ownership; actor analysis methods; new product development.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPD.2017.087378

International Journal of Product Development, 2017 Vol.22 No.3, pp.189 - 211

Accepted: 21 Aug 2017
Published online: 13 Oct 2017 *

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