90% of companies delay product launches
90% of companies delay product launches
This article is part of the CoLab Research Reports series, where we publish findings from both engineering leader surveys and aggregated, anonymized CoLab data. To subscribe and receive reports to your inbox, click here.
If you’re like most engineering leaders, you admit to delaying some percentage of your product launches.
Because certain factors affecting an on-time launch are out of your team’s control.
- Key component shortages
- International shipping delays
- High-level business strategy shifts
But what if we told you 90% of engineering leaders admit to delaying product launches specifically due to late stage design changes.
A factor completely in your team’s control.
Are engineering leaders over-indexing their company’s performance?
While confidence in their team’s ability to launch NPD projects doesn’t seem to be a problem, engineering leaders believe the greater industry is faring much worse.
Let’s dig into this.
- 10% of engineering leaders say their company gets every product launch out the door on time. Great news, right? Maybe.
- Engineering leaders also believe other companies in their industry delay at least some percentage of product launches. Something is off here.
- Even more revealing, 40% of engineering leaders believe other companies delay more than 10% of product launches.
Why is this significant?
If engineering leaders overestimate the problem for their industry but not their own company, they may be less likely to prioritize the problem.
A common scenario we see is engineering leaders who understand late stage design changes are a problem for on-time product launches, but that problem is just not a priority. With the results here, engineering leaders may be over-indexing what they assume to be an industry-wide problem, but one that is not as rampant in their own company.
In reality, if most engineering leaders believe their company is outperforming their industry, it stands to reason that they are simply performing to industry standard. Meaning late stage design changes are both a company-level problem and an industry-wide problem.
This also aligns to what we’re seeing as an early industry shift. Larger industry leaders with more manpower and resources recognize late stage design changes as a significant problem. Moreover, they are also taking the necessary steps to start solving it.
Whether you’re an industry leader or not, now is a good time to reassess whether the late stage design problem should be a higher priority.
Milestones delays as a precursor to NPD launch delays
When examining the frequency of milestone delays compared to overall launch delays, we see a higher skew towards at least some milestone delays due to late stage design changes.
This isn’t that surprising. Milestone delays are much lower stakes than launch delays.
What this does reveal for companies is a strong correlation between milestone and launch delays. While more companies skew towards the 10-20% of milestones delayed, these all fall below a frequency of 30% – almost identical to launch delays.
Furthermore, milestone delays could be a strong indicator and even precursor to potential launch delays. This can also tell us a lot about how to approach a potential solution.
Let’s break it down.
- Most engineering leaders delay project milestones due to late stage design changes.
- Because the cause is late stage design changes, we can assume the delays happen well after design.
- A potential solution is to pinpoint more issues during design than after.
Most engineers will read that and go, “Duh!” But it’s the making it happen that’s difficult.
To get more feedback from more people during design usually means way more admin work for engineers. Oh, and it’s all manual.
Because engineers use tools like PowerPoints, spreadsheets and email to conduct design review, gather design feedback and track design issues.
So, most teams just deal with the problem. They accept that some percentage of project milestones will be delayed. And then that some percentage of entire product launches will be delayed.
But the engineering teams today who are:
- Cutting NPD cycles in half
- Getting 10x+ more feedback during design review
- Eliminating rework cycles
aren’t accepting this.
They’re transforming the way they do design review.
Summary
This research report revealed four key insights about NPD launch delays:
- Most engineering leaders admit to delaying some percentage of their product launches due to late stage design changes
- Engineering teams tend to delay more project milestone delays than full launches due to late stage design issues
- Engineering leaders tend to over-index their own company’s performance when it comes to on-time product launches compared to the greater industry.
- Milestone delays and full launch delays due to late stage design changes have a strong positive correlation. This suggests milestone delays may be a precursor or indicator of potential launch delays.
About the survey
To get greater insight into the state of complex product development processes, we commissioned a survey of 250 full-time employees, 50% of which are Engineering Managers or Directors, and 50% of which are VPs or C Level Executives.
Respondents work in the manufacturing industry, specifically in industrial equipment, heavy machinery, automotive, and consumer hardware, and are split across the US, the UK, and Western Europe.
All respondents work at companies with 1,000+ employees that have already invested in a PDM or PLM system.
This report was administered online by Global Surveyz Research, a global research firm. The respondents were recruited through a global B2B research panel, invited via email to complete the survey, with all responses collected during October 2023. The average amount of time spent on the survey was 5 minutes and 44 seconds. The answers to the majority of the non-numerical questions were randomized, in order to prevent order bias in the answers.
Quantifying the impact of design review methods on NPD
