Managing Change Using Advanced Baselining Concepts

I have worked with several client regarding the principles of change management. What I found was, all in different forms follow CMII principles however the DYNAMICS in which change is implemented into the product and the management process differ. They all operate the specific objects to record change, and also the ‘back-office’ organizations, such as the Change Control Board and some operate also a dedicated Change Introduction Board.

What do I mean with this ‘dynamics’. The change dynamics is the business rational how change introduction ripples through into the product and specifically aspects surrounding product sustainment i.e. sustainment being the process to maintain a product and secure save operation from an engineering perspective. There is a name for it emerging: Sustainment Lifecycle Management.

Technology Enabled Organizational Change Strategy

Change is a permanent organizational challenge and it does not matter what industry, size of enterprise or organizational structure. Complex collaboration models, the shorter product lifecycles, the variety of products that require attention, the increased product complexity, the advancing information technology and lastly the economic situation. These are some examples of the reasons and accelerators of change.
What is the ability of organizations to execute change, what are the drivers, what are the impediments behind the need, how well do companies execute operational initiatives. Specifically this last topic is the reason to work with experienced consultants. What are the enablers of success?

Social Networking meets PLM

I am a Twitter user….. are you? I am writing ‘tweets’ (as InsidePLM name also) as I want to understand how this technology can be used and what potential business value it may bring to an engineering process. Tweets you could consider the most simple form of collaboration, you let another person know what you are doing, you are in fact networking. Twitter could be considered a component of collaboration technology.
Today’s business environment of working together is complex and without a technology to help, you would really struggle. Collaboration technology encompasses a broad range of tools that enable groups of people to collaborate including; social networking, instant messaging, team spaces, application sharing, audio conferencing, video, and telephony. Many large but also SMB companies are developing ‘enterprise’ collaboration strategies and standardize on a collaboration framework to allow their employees, customers and partners to intelligently and virtually connect and interact.

Much of this ‘stuff’ is developed under the umbrella of Web 2.0. It concerns the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design, with the aim to enhance creativity, communication and secure information sharing. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs.

In a series of posts I’ll be writing about various functions and capabilities and how they may be used in a PLM context.

Collaboration and Enabling Framework

Collaboration frameworks are offered by several PLM vendors and some have experience with SharePoint in a PLM context. A collaboration framework offers companies and employees the ability to share and manage ‘project’ data and through these functions collaborate more effective. Successful collaboration occurs when each participant [or stakeholder] is able to make a unique contribution toward achieving a common goal. In this post I’ll be talking about the technology in support of collaboration.

Instant Messaging helps Collaboration

‘Instant’ Messaging (IM or IMing) is an application to shoot an instant text message for ‘Quick questions and clarifications’ and enable rapid information dissemination and decision-making between one or more persons ‘collaborating’. The text is conveyed via devices (also phone) connected over a network such as the Intra/Internet. It is an informal form of knowledge exchange although the actual conversation can be saved for different purposes. IM is also less intrusive, as ‘discussions’ between co-workers are briefer compared with for example phone. Still certain IM clients today also support traditional phone capabilities (VOIP) as well as support of file sharing and webcam. There is a large variety of IM clients and Wikipedia publishes a list of these. One of the key impediments to a large usage today is the compatibility of protocols. The escape is to use a developer with a strong market presence and rich functions. Skype for example started as an internet phone capability and includes now IM as well (see also Application Sharing).
So IM is an ideal tool to quickly consult an ‘online’ coworker regarding a technical challenge. Working with companies we see this technology used as the need for effective knowledge sharing, team working and collaborative environments amongst employees has become vital, especially those teams working in geographically dispersed. Statistics further learns that Tens of millions of the consumer IM accounts in use are being used for business purposes by employees of companies and other organizations. IM adoption usually is a bottom-up evolution as employees adopt these capabilities, sometime against company (compliance) rules.

PLM and Micro Blogging

As I stated in the intro. I use Twitter. I got curious a while ago how this technology can be used in Engineering. Consider Twitter an internet based text messaging service. Yammer is the corporate intranet variant. Tweets are the actual blog posts (like this article). Twitter is in fact a so called micro blog. Twitter can be read by all, whereas Yammer only by those that share the same company email domain name. Coincidental, posts on Yammer are still called tweets.

Social Networks the Backbone of Integrated Product Teams

‘Facebook’ and the professional network LinkedIn are examples of an interactive way to keep in touch with people you know. In a business context these people may be colleagues or persons you may have worked with in the past or even ‘supplier’ connections.
I suppose we all know Facebook (FB), for those who do not, just google it. In this short post I will NOT be talking about the social side of FB rather the business side/potential.

Integrated Product Teams (IPT)

IPT (or cross functional teams) are made up of multi-functional stakeholders that collaborate with a product-oriented focus. IPT is an evolution of Concurrent Engineering. IPT is an evolving form of collaboration. Product development activities change and evolve over its life, team composition and leadership will evolve likewise. While marketing personnel, acquisition planners, project managers and design engineers may be the most prominent members early in the life cycle, provisioners and item managers gain a bigger voice during engineering and manufacturing development. Equipment specialists and mechanics may be the lead members during the operations and maintenance phase, with the design engineers returning once again if a major modification is needed.

Software Configuration Management

Many high tech products these days cannot work without software that controls specific (user) functions of the product. Take your car; engine functions that were traditionally mechanically controlled have now been replaced by devices and capabilities that are managed by software. Also when you travel to your vacation destination by air the very plane you are flying in is loaded with software to control for example the avionics or the (glass) cockpit instrument panel. Recently I was asked to consult for a client that had configuration management issues regarding software installed in their product. They had challenges to manage the appropriate version of the software in relation to the hardware configuration and also assuring that certification results were correctly captured. A further challenge was the collaboration with partners that actually does the software development and the maintenance. Our recommendation consisted of the following set of improvement initiatives and functions.

Integrated Software Requirement Management

In the previous post I talked about Software Configuration Management. This post is about management of software requirements and the link to software configuration management.
Although I did not specifically discuss management of software requirements in the previous post, it is evident that managing the configuration includes the specification sources i.e. the requirements. In the first recommendation of the previous post I touched on the object Work Request and example supporting materials e.g. specifications that may be attached. Ideally requirements are decomposed to individual requirement line items, i.e. similar to a tree. Each such line item would then specify the desired function but also instructions essential to developers but also test scenarios and the required end results that must be met.
In the requirements set you also find the actual failure mode and effect analysis i.e. if this function fails; what would be the effect and what would would need to be implemented that this failure would not occur. Obviously this is not just the software itself but the complete integration with the hardware it may need to control. As pointed out earlier, this level of detail is critical to also manage the prototype test process and also the actual life test i.e. the software as it is installed onto the product. The myriad of interconnections considering this level of detail and also combined with Change management records makes data management a daunting task without the right PLM capabilities.