PaR - Processes as RequirementsPaRade
 
 

PaRade of challenges and solutions

 
 

Nowadays we perform projects or even organize companies in an agile fashion to stay focused, to inspect and adapt often, and to enable teams to do the right things. We see innovations spreading faster, new products emerging in many variants, and windows of opportunities closing quicker than ever. On the other hand the processes to be applied in the projects often get more and more heavy-weight and frozen, like being defined once and forever.

In all complex organizations that engineer complicated products, but also in many industries and special domains we see projects struggling with the regulatory standards and the corporate processes that are to be applied. During my coaching of complex projects in recent years I discovered 5 challenges. They all can be addressed by changing the way to deal with bulky standards and processes. Bringing these deeply into the projects makes them feel more intrinsic and natural. I derived dedicated needs from those challenges and went further down to requirements to figure out a methodical framework, visualized by the PaRis (PaR information system). Together with KoDeCs I successfully worked out a similar more basic approach over 3 years for an automotive supplier. At another automotive supplier I created a process framework for platform based product engineering and introduced it to multiple product families over 6 years. Those jobs were driving me to work out a more holistic intrinsic and sophisticated methodical framework on my own to help as many companies and teams as possible.

I created the PaR methodical framework to address these challenges around their 5 keywords. While most companies and tool vendors try to set up the requirements according to the regulatory standards and corporate processes I bring those standards and processes into the requirements tool, because they are nothing else than requirements. When the requirements engineering tool is also used for managing change requests and reviews and testing (validation and verification), then it becomes an even more holistic approach. When a variable process platform is established for variable product platforms, then they can be united to become true holistic component models.

 
  ?   How do you design corporate development processes that are flexible enough to be a help for all kinds of your projects?  
   !    Define the processes as requirements in dedicated sets that can be reused as needed in the projects applying the teams' standard RE tool!  
   
   ?    How do you merge all needed regulatory standards with the corporate development processes to make it a holistic approach?  
   !    Define the regulatory standards also as requirements and relate them to the corporate development processes with bi-directional traceability!  
   
   ?    How do you establish sustainable corporate development processes that can learn together with or from the project teams?  
   !    Unite the process requirements and the product requirements in the projects, but improve both platforms by synchronizing requirements!  
   
   ?    How do you ensure that your projects continuously comply with corporate development processes and regulatory standards?  
   !    When the standards and/or processes are pulled as requirements into the projects, the RE tool can monitor the bi-directional traceability!  
   
   ?    How do you monitor the actual progress of the project and product maturity, in addition to monitoring time and budget?  
   !    Defining a status for process requirements, adding templates for simple documents, and real reviews will help measuring progress in maturity!