The industrialization of application software development is a key trend in the software
industry. One important element of industrialized development processes is the
introduction of a division of work with specialized competencies. Cross-functional
integration is a fundamental and well established concept in product development. Its
potential has also been recognized in application software development. Many enterprise
application software vendors have established product management to complement software
development from a business perspective, while R+D primarily focuses on technology
aspects. Due to the growing significance of usability and user experience, the product
design function has become increasingly important for application software development.
However, there is little empirical work concerning cross-functional integration of product
management and product design in application software development. The work presented in
this paper explores success factors of this cross-functional integration.