In order to better understand the link between lead-time, organizational design and

product development strategies one must focus on the building block of

organizations, that is the way, in which tasks are defined and allocated to teams.

Defining tasks to improve lead-time in product development

Defining tasks is one way of breaking up large-scale problems up into small scale
problems that can be managed by small teams (cusumano, 1997). There are many
reasons why it is efficient to divide design activities of a large project among
different individuals and an important one is that it may improve lead-time in
product development. Tasks may loosely be defined as the partitioning of product
development activities in a way, which delimit the activities that are carried out by
one individual from those activities that are carried out by another individual.
It will improver lead-time in product development most when tasks are defined in
ways that simultaneously economize on bounded rationally, improve