Ideas to Requirements in the Product Engineering Lifecycle

Mills Ripley

ALM Customer Solutions Director for North America, PTC Inc.

IDEAS TO REQUIREMENTS IN THE PRODUCT ENGINEERING LIFECYCLE

AGENDA• Introductions

• Product Management Opportunities and Challenges

• Definitions – Ideation and Idea Management

• Context – Ideation, Requirements, Application Lifecycle Management

• Example – Idea Management Customer Community Portal

• Q & A

INNOVATION AND QUALITY DRIVE MARKET-LEADING PRODUCTS

3

High quality, innovative products increase market share and revenue

Innovative processes improve quality and accelerate time to market

while decreasing cost and risk

Software IntensiveProducts

Connectivity

Regulation

Personalization

Globalization

PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

Reduce Time to Market

Reduce Product Costs

Accelerate Product Innovation

Streamline Regulatory Compliance

Improve Product Quality

Competitive Pressures

The Need to…

Transform Systems and

Software Engineering

Processes

MarketForces

IDEATION IS ABOUT TECHNIQUES THAT GENERATE IDEAS

From our friends at Wikipedia…

• Ideation is an emerging buzzword (c. 2004) representing the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas, where an idea is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete, or abstract. As such, it is an essential part of the design process, both in education and practice.

• Ideation can be contrasted with brainstorming in that brainstorming is a specific instance of ideation. Brainstorming employs specific rules (such as disallowing any contributor to negate any idea offered during a brainstorming session), while ideation encompasses all techniques that generate ideas.

• Several large companies, like Starbucks and Best Buy, have opened up this process to their customers, inviting anyone to raise new ideas for possible company products using dedicated idea management software open on the Internet.

COMMUNITY IDEA COLLABORATION SITE

ALM/PLM Server

CommunitySiteServer

SYSTEM CLASSES & RELATIONSHIPS

CustomerDeliverable

ProductRequirement

Fulfilled by

FunctionalSpec

Test Case

Satisfied by

Validated by

IdeaRelease

Customer Rating

CommunityMember

1 0..*

0..*0..*

*

1

0..*0..*

Need Date

CUSTOMER & MARKET RELATIONSHIP

MarketCustomer

importance

rating: int

0..* 0..*

CUSTOMER & MARKET RELATIONSHIP

importance = 5Customer: Nike

Customer: Under Armour

Market: Sports Apparel

Market: Sports Footwear

importance = 9

importance = 7

importance = 2

A benign example…

IDEA MANAGEMENT – COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE

• Objectives

• Idea Search

• Idea Submission

• Idea Collaboration (edit and comment)

• Idea Rating

• Value

• Influence product direction by creating and rating ideas

• Communicate with other community members as well as product management

• Track the status of “my” ideas

IDEA MANAGEMENT SITE – COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE

IDEA MANAGEMENT – PRODUCT MANAGER PERSPECTIVE

• Objectives

• Analyze ideas using value and cost data

• Capture additional value and cost data from internal roles

• Perform opportunity analysis to determine if ideas support market opportunities

• Show how ideas are grouped into customer deliverables

• Flowdown Ideas to Customer Deliverables to Requirements…

• Value

• Ideas are evaluated and related to other lifecycle assets - critical for planning, impact analysis, rolling-up metrics and monitoring progress

• Real-time metrics and analysis improves alignment to customer needs, product deliverables, and business outcomes

IDEA MANAGEMENT– PRODUCT MANAGER PERSPECTIVE

NOTES ON VALUATION CRITERIA• These are just a sampling of common criteria

• Customer Value

• Strategic Value

• Sales Value

• Estimated Cost

• Can be single value criteria or composite criteria based on multiple choice questions with assigned values and weightings (quite simple to implement)

• Value and costs data can be captured role by role through a workflow that is as simple or intricate as needed

• Real-time dashboards enable informed and timely decisions

IDEA MANAGEMENT IS ABOUT INNOVATION AND PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT

• Idea Management can significantly improve product requirements, but that alone does not guarantee the improvement of products

• Product Improvement also involves:

• Ensuring traceability from ideas to requirements to tests and test results to ensure we are actually building what we set out to build

• Enabling reuse across the lifecycle ensures that validated and proven sets of assets are propagated

• Tracking progress and quality metrics throughout development

• Automating and enforcing proven workflows

SUMMARY

CustomerDeliverable

ProductRequirement

Fulfilled by

FunctionalSpec

Test Case

Satisfied by

Validated by

IdeaRelease

Customer

Rating

CommunityMember

Community inputs & rates ideas

Ideas Evaluated & Rationalized -“What is the strategic value, sales value, community value, level of effort…?”“How are ideas related?”

Real Time Test Status – “Am I Ready to Release?”

Customer and Market Ratings – “How importantis this to key customers and markets?” “When do they need this deliverable?”“If a deliverable slips, who is going to be upset and how upset will they be?”

Release Planning – “When Should I Release?”

Ideas Formalized – “What dowe need to build?”

Ideas Executed – “How dowe need to build it?”

Build the Right Thing

Build the Thing Right

Need Date