Managing product maturity

industrial collaborators:	BAE Systems
academic collaborators:	ESGI59
initiated :	2007/06/05
last updated:	2010/05/25

Study group report 2007: managing product maturity (BAE Systems)
This is the final report on the problem of managing product maturity through its lifecycle, brought to ESGI59 by BAE Systems. Click on the link at the bottom to download the full report as a pdf document.

Report author
Tim Gardener (Industrial Mathematics KTN)

Executive summary
BAE Systems is a global company that manages and delivers large and complex innovative engineering products. This complexity entails multi-national partners and suppliers, changing requirements, cutting-edge technology together with long timescales and multi-billion pound investments. After many years of experience in the delivery of major defence projects, BAE Systems has initiated an innovative product management process to chart progression through the product lifecycle, thereby allowing early identification and resolution of problems.

Maturity described
How exactly can one chart the progression through the product lifecycle to allow early identification and resolution of problems? This question is decomposed into four quantifiable questions; the first linked to the contractual specification at a product level, and the subsequent three to issues in the lower level specifications on what is actually required to make the product work:

• (M1) What progress is there against customer specification?
• (M2) What progress is there against changes to lower level specifications that have been identified as important?
• (M3) What progress is there against interface issues currently under negotiation with stakeholders (internal or external customers, suppliers or other partners)?
• (M4) What other possible changes might we envisage impacting on progress?

The first of these questions (M1) relates to standard project management practice. The remaining three are BAE Systems’ current means to manage the difference between contractual theory and engineering practicality. At one end of the scale, (M2) is recognised and agreed by all parties as necessary changes to the lower level specifications; slightly worse, (M3) is the uncertainty caused by negotiations between stakeholders; and worst of all, (M4) is the amount of potential change as a result of issues we do not yet fully grasp.

Product complexity
A product (or system-of-systems) is broken down into systems, sub-systems and equipments, together with integrating elements at each level. This can be understood in terms of a product tree:
At the lowest level, for each branch in the tree the element is ascribed a maturity score. The maturity score M for an element is currently calculated by multiplying together the percentage scores responding to the questions (M1) - (M4) as previously described.

Maturity scores from each lowest level element of the product are recorded monthly so that over time the evolution of the product maturity can be traced. The maturity scores at lower levels of the product breakdown are aggregated to give a representation of maturity at the higher levels. When all maturity scores are aggregated then one gains an assessment of the maturity state of the entire product. These scores are used in planning since the project managers want to be able to understand when and where to allocate resources most efficiently.

Aggregation entails taking a simple average across all elements of interest. For example, in subsystem A, the average over all elements in the product tree below subsystem A would give a maturity score for that subsystem.

Click on the link below to view the full report.

 

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	Managing product maturity
»	Study group report 2007: managing product maturity (BAE Systems)
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