Systematic Requirements Management Creates Enormous Potential
Systems Engineering through Traceability
Traceability is an important aspect of complexity management. This is about making internal processes traceable through complex agility and thus easier to influence. Traceability is used as a term when talking about traceability. In this context, traceability is much more. Traceability includes revision security, compliance and actual traceability.
Revision security is about tracing all the individual steps that occur in a development process. Configuration management staff should be responsible for this. Compliance is about retrospectively tracking how processes and standards were adhered to, and traceability is about tracing the relationships of the individual parts of the development process. All of these things influence engineering and thus have an enormous impact on complexity management.
Systems Engineering as a Core Issue
Complexity management is not an invention of modern times, but was already introduced in the forties of the last century. It is an interplay between systems engineering and engineering management. The focus is on organizing complex systems over their life cycle. This includes methods engineering, systems engineering and requirements engineering.
In essence, complexity management is not about thinking in small steps, but in terms of a holistic system. Through this interaction, the individual components of the production process should form a symbiotic relationship with each other in order to jointly perform new, useful functions.
Complexity Management is Multifaceted
Complexity management begins at the planning stage. Among other things, customer requirements are compiled, and reliability and logistics also play a major role. However, the collaboration of different teams of individual project points is at least as important. The more complicated the projects, the more extensive and versatile the complexity management. The tasks of engineering are primarily optimization methods and risk management. Technical disciplines regularly overlap with disciplines performed by humans. Overall, systems engineering is intended to ensure that all possible aspects of the new project or system are taken into account in advance and considered as a whole.
The Engineering Process as a Voyage of Discovery
Engineering cannot be compared with a conventional manufacturing process. While the pure manufacturing process focuses on regularly recurring activities with the goal of achieving an excellent result at the lowest possible cost and time, engineering is primarily concerned with identifying actual problems in order to isolate the most likely and most frequently occurring errors. Engineering focuses on solving the problems.
Different Requirements Engineering Methods
Another term for this is requirements analysis. It determines which requirements the system or product to be developed must fulfill. It defines systematic procedures from the idea to the goal and the complete fulfillment of the requirements. The main goal is to achieve a common approach and a common way of looking at things between all those involved in the project. In this way, the individual requirements engineering methods are closely intertwined and have a major influence on the quality and results of the product.
In principle, of course, every project should be completed successfully. But this is not true for all projects. Very often, these methods could help to turn a possible failure into a success. It is important to stick to the four main activities. The first one is to determine the requirements. The next step is documenting them. Requirements for the project must be documented in any case. It does not matter in which form they are documented. The next step is to check and coordinate. This is to ensure that the quality of the requirements meets the customer's wishes. The last point, which is also very important, is managing the entire project.
Methods Engineering in the Context of Complexity Management
Methods engineering emerged at the end of the eighties as an independent area within software engineering and is treated as an independent area in research. Due to the increasing complexity of numerous mechatronic systems, complexity management must be constantly revised and adapted to given situations. Methods engineering deals with two different visions. One variant is the computer-aided methodical development of a design and the other variant is the computer-aided controlled execution of the project. The two variants are intended to support and simplify complexity management.
Advantages of Complexity Management Software
Software that encompasses the complex operations of management has many advantages. It can accelerate intelligent product creation and unleash innovation potential to be used profitably elsewhere. At the same time, it promotes transparency in workflow-based collaboration and enables structured documentation and communication. This makes all the processes involved in a project transparent.
Instead of many individual solutions that later have to be compared with each other, complex software provides a common database to which all authorized employees have access. This eliminates duplicate data and ensures that data is always up to date.
Process optimization or complexity management begins with an examination of the company's internal workflows. They are not only observed by the complex management, but also checked and corrected. With good software, existing errors can be quickly detected and corrected.
Sources of errors are minimized in companies. The same applies to information about the sources of errors. They need to be entered only once, and the administrative and organizational effort is thus reduced.
Complexity management software takes customer satisfaction to a whole new level. Authorized employees can immediately see in the system what problems exist with customers and advise them satisfactorily.
In general, software offers numerous standardized evaluation options that are always up-to-date and reliable. This means that authorized employees can see a complete overview of the company at any time. Thanks to the new transparency, decisions can be made faster and more efficiently. Previously time-consuming reporting can be kept to a minimum.
Overall, software ensures that communication between employees and those responsible is much easier. Information is stored centrally and time-consuming searches are a thing of the past. Among other things, the software can also be used to regulate which information has to be submitted again, eliminating the need for tiresome follow-up with colleagues and superiors.
Another advantage of standardized software for complexity management is the ability to permanently digitize and store all documents. This saves paper and protects the environment. The time spent on time-consuming searches for a specific invoice is also reduced by software's own search functions.
Conclusion
Numerous statistics show that motivation increases among employees once they have made friends with new software. This is mainly due to the fact that monotonous standard tasks are eliminated and work processes are simplified. In this context, the efficiency of work increases and the error rate of employees is minimized.