The importance of project management in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for the development of new products through E-collaboration. Afr. J. Bus. Manage. 30 November, 2011

frican Journal of Business Management Vol. 5(30), pp. 11844-11855, 30 November, 2011 DOI: 10.5897/AJBM10.1265 ISSN 1993-8233 ©2011 Academic Journals

Full Length Research Paper The importance of project management in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for the development of new products through E-collaboration Marjan Mohammadjafari1*, Shamsuddin Ahmed1, Siti Zawiah Md Dawal1 and Hadi Zayandehroodi2 1Department of Engineering, Design and Manufacturing University of Malaya, Lembah Pantai, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2Department of Electrical Engineering, Kerman Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran. *Corresponding author. E-mail: marjan_mohamadjafari@yahoo.com. Tel: 0060173141328. Accepted 29 November, 2010 Abstract The research in this paper seeks ways for manufacturing companies to accomplish projects in real time with less cost. This paper describes a new model using critical success factors of implementing projects in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The factors in the conceptual model were identified in past studies and are validated from interviews with 20 project managers in the electronics industry in Iran. Several prior researches have suggested critical success factors for reducing time and cost in the development of a new product. These factors are related to design, product, planning and procurement. However, none of these studies has proposed a model that specifies practices that should be undertaken to facilitate the progression to reduce time and cost in developing new products in SMEs. Following this, a development of a new model will likely prove important to help SMEs to understand what is required in order to be an effective global organization in terms of reducing time and cost through electronic collaboration (E-collaboration) and project management. The concept and value of E-collaboration and project management, and its strengths and weakness on SMEs, is also explained. Key words: E-collaboration, project management, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), new product, reduces time, reduce cost.

Mohammadjafari et al. The importance of project management in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for the development of new products through E-collaboration. Afr. J. Bus. Manage. 30 November, 2011