Requirements Decomposition and Traceability

Complexity of requirements can be daunting to manage, but breaking them down into smaller, manageable components through requirements decomposition will alleviate the burden. By decomposing complex requirements into smaller, more granular elements, businesses improve understanding, assign ownership, and allocate resources more effectively. Additionally, establishing traceability between these decomposed requirements helps ensure that each component is adequately addressed, facilitating validation and verification processes.

Prioritization Techniques

Given the vast number of requirements, it is crucial to prioritize them effectively. Prioritization techniques, such as the MoSCoW method (Must-Have, Should-Have, Could-Have, Won’t-Have), can help businesses identify and focus on the most critical requirements. This approach ensures that the most essential functionalities are developed and delivered first, reducing the risk of project delays and enabling faster time-to-market. Prioritization also allows teams to allocate resources based on the importance and urgency of each requirement, optimizing efficiency and accelerating development.

Requirements Management Tools

Utilizing specialized requirements management tools aid significantly in handling the complexity of numerous requirements. These tools offer features such as categorization, filtering, and tracking, enabling to organize and manage requirements more efficiently. By centralizing requirements in a dedicated system, teams can easily access, update, and collaborate on requirements, reducing confusion and ensuring everyone is aligned. Moreover, proper tools provide full traceability, linking requirements to related documents, tests, and design artifacts, enhancing clarity and facilitating effective requirement management.

Continuous Review and Validation

In the face of complex requirements, continuous review and validation are essential to prevent misunderstandings and ensure accuracy. Regularly reviewing and validating requirements with stakeholders, customers, and subject matter experts helps identify potential issues or gaps early on, minimizing rework and optimizing the development process. This iterative approach allows for ongoing refinement and alignment of requirements, contributing to improved clarity, reduced complexity, and faster development cycles. Developing the right thing is the most fundamental way to shorten the time to market.

Conclusion

In today’s complex product development landscape, managing a large number of requirements is a challenge that businesses must overcome to accelerate development and maximize resource utilization. By employing strategies such as requirements decomposition, prioritization techniques, leveraging requirements management tools, and adopting continuous review and validation practices, businesses can streamline not only the requirements management process, but the whole business. With these strategies in place, businesses can effectively handle the large volume of requirements and achieve faster time-to-market, gaining a competitive advantage in the market.

It’s All About Requirements

In today’s complex world requirements are present everywhere. Traditionally formal requirements management has been in focus mostly at organizations that develop safety critical products like medical devices, cars and air planes. This is not true anymore. In the modern society all companies and organizations have to consider things like cyber security, data processing, availability of critical solutions, contract fulfilment, procurement etc. which are all really about understanding what requirements they impose and how to fulfil those requirements.

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Large investment projects play a crucial role in driving economic growth and development. However, these projects are often complex and involve significant financial resources, making effective management essential for their success. In this article, we will draw insights from four presentations to explore key aspects of large investment projects, including change management, requirement management, and project risk management. By synthesizing the information from these presentations, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of the strategies necessary to ensure successful outcomes in such endeavours.

Change Management in Large Capital Projects

The webinar on large capital projects emphasizes the importance of change management throughout the project lifecycle. Change is an inherent aspect of any large investment project, and organizations must proactively address it to avoid disruptions and enhance project outcomes. The presentation highlights the need for effective communication, stakeholder engagement, and training programs to minimize resistance to change and ensure smooth project implementation. By creating a culture that embraces change and fostering open lines of communication, project teams can effectively manage and navigate the complexities that arise during large investment projects.

See free webinar!

Change Management in Public Transport Investment Projects

Investment projects in public transport often involve diverse stakeholders and extensive coordination efforts. The presentation on change management in public transport investment projects underscores the significance of stakeholder engagement and collaboration. It emphasizes the need for comprehensive change impact assessments, proactive communication strategies, and stakeholder involvement to gain their buy-in and address their concerns. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of integrating change management processes into the project management framework to ensure that changes are effectively implemented while minimizing disruption to operations and service delivery.

See Trafikförvaltningen Change Management Presentation!

Requirement Management in Large Investment Projects

The requirement management presentation delves into the critical role of requirements in large investment projects. Clear and well-defined requirements are essential for project success, as they serve as the foundation for project planning, design, and implementation. Effective requirement management involves accurately capturing and documenting stakeholder needs, managing changes to requirements, and ensuring traceability throughout the project lifecycle. By adopting robust requirement management practices, organizations can align project objectives with stakeholder expectations, mitigate risks associated with scope creep, and enhance overall project outcomes.

See example presentation here!

Project Risk Management in a Commuter Train Project

Managing risks is crucial to the success of any investment project, and the presentation on project risk management in a commuter train project sheds light on this important aspect. The presentation emphasizes the need for a structured and systematic approach to identify, assess, and mitigate risks throughout the project lifecycle. It highlights the significance of establishing risk management processes, conducting regular risk assessments, and developing contingency plans to address potential threats. Effective risk management enables project teams to proactively identify and respond to risks, thereby minimizing the impact on project timelines, budgets, and deliverables.

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Conclusion

Large investment projects require a holistic approach that encompasses change management, requirement management, and project risk management. By integrating the insights from the four presentations, organizations can enhance their project management practices and increase the likelihood of successful outcomes. Effective change management ensures smooth transitions and stakeholder engagement, requirement management establishes clear project objectives, and project risk management mitigates potential threats. By embracing these strategies, organizations can navigate the complexities of large investment projects and achieve their desired goals while maximizing value for stakeholders.

Putting things in boxes is a very human behavior. It is the way the human brain works in order to understand things. For this reason, we tend to compartmentalize and put everything in boxes – silos. In product development organizations, silos are detrimental to innovation, productivity, and overall success. Silos refer to isolated and disconnected departments, teams, or functions within an organization that hinder effective communication, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and information flow. This article delves into the problems caused by silos in product development organizations and presents strategies to reduce their impact, ultimately fostering a more integrated and collaborative environment.

The Problems Caused by Silos

Handoffs and Dependencies

Silos create handoffs between different functions or departments, where one team completes their work and passes it on to the next team for further processing. Each handoff introduces a potential delay as the receiving team may have their own priorities or be dealing with a backlog. Without effective communication and collaboration, these handoffs become bottlenecks, causing work to pile up and slowing down the overall process. Effective handoffs need to be designed into processes; they don’t happen by themselves. For example, imagine a task that requires three people to work on it. If each person uses an hour of work time to do their part, the minimum throughput time would be three hours. Typically, there is a 1 to 10 workdays delay between individuals, which means that throughput time will be dominated by the waiting time between those individuals. Thus, the three hours can turn into two weeks just because of handovers.

Lack of Visibility and Accountability

Silos often result in a lack of visibility across the entire product development process. Each function or team may only be focused on their own tasks and goals, without a holistic understanding of the broader workflow. This lack of visibility makes it difficult to identify bottlenecks, address inefficiencies, or hold accountable the teams responsible for delays. The absence of clear ownership and accountability will further prolong throughput times. This also applies to waiting times and the size of queues or backlogs.

Lack of Cross-Functional Knowledge, Expertise, and Collaboration

Silos limit the exchange of knowledge and expertise across functions. As a result, teams may lack a comprehensive understanding of the requirements, challenges, or constraints faced by other teams involved in the product development process. This lack of cross-functional knowledge typically leads to misunderstandings, rework, and delays as teams need to go back and forth to clarify requirements or address issues that could have been resolved more efficiently through collaboration. A recent example of this comes from Tesla. Elon Musk mentioned that there was a part in the Tesla Model 3 car assembly that was slowing down the entire production process. There was a glass fiber insulation between the battery and passenger compartment. The battery team thought it was needed for noise insulation, while the noise team thought it was needed for fire safety because of the battery. Eventually, the part was completely removed because it was unnecessary. The reduction of this one part helped drive down costs, production time, and improve quality.

Strategies to Reduce Silos

Streamline Workflows and Processes

Review and streamline workflows and processes to eliminate unnecessary handoffs and reduce waiting times between functions. Clarify responsibilities, including queues or backlogs within or between functions. Identify areas of inefficiency or duplication and implement measures to streamline the flow of work. This may involve redefining roles and responsibilities, optimizing approval processes, or implementing workflow automation tools to minimize manual interventions and reduce throughput times. It is also important to establish a single point of truth for information.

Develop a Shared Understanding of Goals, Priorities, and Responsibilities

Ensure that teams and departments have a shared understanding of the organization’s goals and priorities. Clearly communicate the overall objectives and align individual functions accordingly. By creating a common sense of purpose, teams are more likely to collaborate and coordinate their efforts effectively, leading to improved throughput times. Identify gaps in responsibilities and address them.

Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Encourage employees to identify and address bottlenecks or inefficiencies in the product development process. Establish mechanisms for employees to suggest improvements, such as idea sharing platforms or regular feedback sessions. Foster a culture of continuous improvement where all team members actively contribute to identifying and implementing solutions that can reduce silos and improve throughput times.

Conclusion

Silos in product development organizations significantly impact throughput times, leading to delays and inefficiencies. By implementing strategies that foster communication, collaboration, streamlined processes, and a shared understanding of goals, organizations can effectively reduce the impact of silos. Breaking down these barriers allows for better coordination and integration across functions, ultimately leading to improved productivity, faster time-to-market, and enhanced overall performance. It all begins with understanding the phenomenon and taking conscious actions against its detrimental effects.

Tapio Tuomola brings a rare perspective to his position as Chief Sales Officer at Taipuva. With a background in engineering, his commitment extends far beyond sales and marketing, and he’s driven by a genuine desire to remove obstacles and ensure seamless operations for customers.

“I don’t see myself as a salesperson, but rather as someone working in customer service. My primary goal is to find the best solution for the customer’s needs, addressing their challenges and finding ways to fix them,” Tapio explains and continues:

“At Taipuva, we all work in customer service in different ways. We truly function as a customer service-oriented team, where everyone contributes to building trust and serving as trusted advisors rather than mere business contacts.”

Fostering professional and personal success

Throughout his seven years at Taipuva, Tapio has witnessed remarkable growth, with revenue skyrocketing and the team expanding from four to twenty employees. But in addition to his professional success, Tapio has experienced personal growth as a father as well.

“Family is everything to me, and I love spending time with my wife and daughter. My daughter was only three months old when I first started at Taipuva, and now I get to walk her to school every morning,” he says and continues:

“Time really flies. I still remember when she was just a baby, and now, she’s about to turn seven. It’s a similar feeling with Taipuva – it was like a newborn when I first started this journey, and now it feels like a thriving teenager.”

Achieving success through team effort

Taipuva recently shifted to a software as a service-based business model, which not only strengthened their position as the leading Siemens partner but also offered customers greater flexibility in scaling their operations.

Tapio played a crucial role in this transformation, which earned him the recognition as the top salesperson in the Nordics by Siemens. But from his perspective, it couldn’t have been possible without the whole team at Taipuva.

“Our success at Taipuva is a result of the collaborative effort of our entire team. We were pioneers in implementing this change, and it was our consistent dedication and hard work that made our accomplishments possible,” Tapio says and continues:

“When working with customers, our main aim is to make processes practical and seamlessly integrated into their daily operations, without adding extra burdens. Our solutions improve collaboration, enhance change management, ensure traceability and proper product information, seamlessly building quality in their everyday operations. It’s truly a team effort that enables us to be where we are today.”

Why are requirements important?

Requirements are important for providing an understanding of what needs to be accomplished. They help ensure that needs and expectations of stakeholders are fulfilled and they provide a basis for measuring progress and success. Clear, well-defined requirements reduce unnecessary work, improve quality and ensure delivery on time and within budget.

This is important in all organizations that have to adhere to complex expectations no matter where the expectations come from (legislation, standards, customers, sub contractors, etc.).

What are requirements?

Requirements are statements that specify what the end result of a project should be or what it should do. They describe the features, functionality, performance, constraints, usability, security, safety, compliance and other characteristics of an end result.

Top sources of requirements:

1. Business: Business stakeholders, such as managers or executives, provide requirements that align with the strategic objectives of the organization. Like need to increase productivity or cut down costs.
2. Market & Customers: Market requirements describe the needs and expectations of the target market that are typically derived through market research. They ensure the system meets the needs of its intended users and is competitive in the marketplace. When there are direct customers for a system they provide input on the features and functionality they would like to have.
3. Regulations and standards: Requirements may be derived from laws, regulations, industry standards, or other external sources that a system or product must comply with. These requirements are often extremely important to fulfil as non-compliance may mean that the end result can not be used. These requirements address things like functional safety, cyber security, environmental issues, etc.
4. Knowledge: Requirements may also arise from prior projects experience, from subject matter experts and other sources of specific knowledge.

Requirements really are everywhere

In this age of increasing data, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, climate change etc. requirements are becoming more and more important in all industries. The regulatory bodies are doing their best to ensure safety, security, environmental aspects, sustainability and fairness. This means an increasing amount of global regulation and standards like GDPR, NIS 2, MDR, Machine Directive, IED and many more.

Complex requirements and the need for structured requirements management is not an industry specific thing anymore. All industries are affected by the ongoing trends and would benefit from better processes to capture, document, analyse and validate their requirements.

Efficient Requirements Management

Managing requirements effectively becomes increasingly challenging as products and systems grow in complexity, consisting of hundreds or thousands of requirements. To streamline the requirements management process and accelerate product development, businesses must employ strategies that address this complexity while ensuring clarity and prioritization.

Read our article about ‘Efficient Requirements Management’ to discover the strategies you should have in place to effectively handle the large volume of requirements, achieve a faster time-to-market, and gain a competitive advantage in the market!

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Requirements Management in Medtech Industry

In order to succeed in the medtech industry, it is required to work systematically with requirements management. Specifying requirements, or design inputs, and traceability between requirements and other design artefacts are demanded by regulations. Systematic and digitalized approach helps enormously in saving work effort securing compliance.

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Andrea Lundkvist has a keen interest in the human body and its functioning. This, combined with her technical inclination, made studying medical technology an easy choice for her. She owes her interest in requirements management in medtech to her sense of order and her experience at Boule Diagnostics. During her studies, she worked concurrently at Boule and focused on requirements management. She was involved in various projects, including the implementation of Polarion as a system for requirements management and product development.

When Andrea is not assisting her clients with the risk management process, she works as a spinning instructor, despite her dislike for outdoor cycling. Andrea’s experience in the highly regulated medtech industry proves valuable in guiding clients from other industries in their risk and requirements management processes. The attainment of smooth workflows is applicable across many industries.

“What I find enjoyable is encountering a problem and knowing that the goal will shift several times. There are multiple stakeholders who want to express their opinions along the way, but how do we reach the destination? I am delighted to be the guide in such situations. It’s rewarding to witness the emergence of something practical and functional. A solid foundation is crucial, as is determining the end result. How do we construct it? There will be numerous discussions and tests throughout the process,” says Andrea.

During her tenure at Boule Diagnostics, Andrea initially had to transfer their documentation to Polarion, a system that was new to them at the time. She also contributed to the development and customization of Polarion according to Boule’s requirements. Boule Diagnostics is a medtech company that manufactures machines for blood analysis in laboratories.

Andrea first encountered Taipuva in her role as a customer at Boule. At Taipuva, she plays a supportive role and gains insights into various industries.

“At Taipuva, we are a team of individuals with diverse expertise and experience from different industries. There is always someone to ask for assistance. I am motivated by helping and teaching others, and I believe that I can contribute to their success. The best aspect of my job is the opportunity to connect with numerous companies and learn from them. Taipuva is a fast-paced, flexible company with ample opportunities for growth. There is no typical employee, but we all share a common passion for systematic work and finding flexible approaches to our tasks,” concludes Andrea.

“I have always been interested in working smarter and understanding the long-term needs of customers. What functionality do they require? What processes do they need to achieve their goals? Much of my career has been focused on testing and verification,” says Carl-Philip. 

Carl-Philip resides in Katrineholm and primarily works remotely, which aligns well with the demands of raising a toddler. He ran a consulting company for a few years and came into contact with Scania. It all began with a five-month project at Scania, but he ended up staying for nearly five years. It was during the implementation of Polarion that he first encountered Taipuva, and the rest is history. 

The NIS 2 Tool to Assist Companies

During Carl-Philip’s job interview with Tord, the idea of creating a tool to aid companies in meeting the requirements of the NIS 2 directive was born. The idea transformed into a project that Carl-Philip has been working on since January, occupying the majority of his time. The tool aims to assist industries affected by the new NIS 2 directive and supports policy document management, identification and risk assessment of information assets, and evaluation of information security practices. 

“I considered all the small companies affected by NIS 2. How will they establish structure and documentation? The concept of the NIS 2 tool is to facilitate compliance and enable the execution of necessary activities with comprehensive documentation,” explains Carl-Philip. 

Launch of NIS 2 Tools Scheduled for Post-Summer 2023

“This idea and tool also impose requirements on us at Taipuva, which is why we ensure compliance with ISO27001 as proof of our correct information security practices,” Carl-Philip adds. 

Taipuva has planned to launch the NIS 2 tool after the summer of 2023, with typical customers being energy companies, water suppliers, healthcare and medtech industries, and other companies that must comply with the NIS 2 directive. 

“I enjoy finding simple solutions to complex problems. Although there might be a sophisticated system in the background, it should be easy to work with. Drawing from my experience in two highly regulated industries, aerospace and automotive, I can apply my expertise to other industries. Many aspects are similar, and the common goal is to maintain control over processes and deliverables. Ultimately, it is about ensuring a safe product, which feels incredibly meaningful,” concludes Carl-Philip. 

DRIM is a platform where you can drag and drop all related documents into it, with AI the platform can analyse, categorise, organise and evaluate RFQ and tender requirements. It’s a strong collaboration platform for your team members to evaluate requirements and enables a better workflow for compliance with STD offerings.

DRIM enables AI-based requirements understanding and knowledge reuse. With DRIM you automate the expert analysis of standards and RFQ/tender requirements, which helps to cut time and save effort in responding to invitations to tender. It also reduces risk and eases leveraging the organisation’s gathered knowledge on compliance with requirements.

Tell us about the platform DRIM and your company DRIMCo?

– DRIMCo is there for customers who have to respond to RFQ and tenders, and who need to analyse these RFQ and tenders, all the requirements, and all the stakeholder requests contained in such RFQ and tender documents. DRIMCo has developed a software (DRIM) which helps you elicit requirements from these documents.

DRIMCo is heavily based on AI, it has more than a dozen AI services for analysing these documents. You just upload the documents in DRIM and then the AI order segments in the documents into single requirements. These requirements are also work items in Polarion, so it makes you capture the requirements from the documents right into Polarion, but keeping the link to the very origin of the requirements. This means you’ll always have full traceability and I think that’s the power of the combination of DRIM and Polarion, you have the full traceability. DRIM combines AI and knowledge, which enables you to have maximum reuse of your expert knowledge.

What would you say is the meaning of Taipuva Polarion Days and the strong ecosystem around the Polarion solution?

– I think it’s very important to have ecosystems around the use of Polarion, to create communities where you can exchange ideas, best practices and experiences. We all have a common interest and work in the Nordic regions. I think it’s very nice that Taipuva is bringing us all together. I discovered that every company is using Polarion in a slightly different way. Here we can mingle, step out of our daily life, be creative and learn from each other.

What are your key takeaways from your presentation?

– I want to open the imagination and the mind to this novel way of working because AI can do additional things to human experts. We introduce this collaboration, the AI is like an assistant to the human being. I want to make people aware of what is feasible, and I want to invite people to collaborate with us. We bring the technology, but the people are the users, they’re bringing the user case. Only if the two things come together well, can we do real innovation.

Promwad Electronics Design House helps its customers develop new engineering solutions for automotive, industrial automation, and other high-tech industries. Their engineering team has been working with Polarion ALM, using this system to develop software under ASPICE, a set of rules and guidelines for the automotive industry. However, they aimed to enhance their skills to reach the next level of cooperation with world-class customers and bring in more developers to work on the Polarion platform.

As a regional expert partner of Siemens Polarion, we offered Promwad our training sessions for more efficient software development and project management. Our 12-hour course covered six modules, from basics to advanced levels. We held it online and equipped the Promwad engineers with additional tools to work with Polarion. 

All 10 engineers completed the course, and 5 reached the advanced level. They gained expertise in customising Polarion for specific projects, creating templates, and administering the platform.

Thanks to the training, Promwad’s team can now organise joint work with engineers, track changes at each stage, create and reuse project requirements, and integrate the platform with other tools like Azure DevOps, Atlassian JIRA, and HP Quality Center.

Our team’s work on client projects is now even more efficient due to the transparency of processes, ease of communication and the ability to track all changes in real time. This approach minimises errors and makes processes more efficient, helping our clients ensure top quality and save resources.

Alexey Safonov,
Head of Automotive Unit at Promwad

Siemens Polarion^® ALM – take control

Get a holistic view, traceability and transparency for all product development and project management information. Everyone is aligned around what is being built while protecting integrity and compliance.

 

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In the In Vitro Diagnostic and Medical Device industries compliance with IVDR, MDR and FDA regulations places heavy requirements on product development, documentation and the quality management system. In addition to validating that your product fits its intended use you must also validate that the software you use for developing these products is fit for its intended use.

At Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Vantaa site a ready-made Polarion process from Taipuva was used to validate Polarion itself. Similar process can be followed to validate any product development software using Polarion.

In addition to regulatory compliance validation of Polarion provides many benefits that support the creation of product documentation, such as ensuring that the intended use of the shared toolset is understood by all relevant stakeholders, and ensuring that the processes and outputs of the system function as expected. Lessons learned during the process of the implementation were that implementation gaps should be found in the before starting the formal testing phase – discover the limitations and failures early so you can adjust accordingly.

What made you choose Polarion?

– Our company chose Polarion mostly because of the expanded functionality over our previous tools. The editing of LiveDocs as a “what you see is what you want” type of document with both text and unique work items allows for a much more continuous process of that document’s life cycle: Instead of trying to separately create individual work items and put them together in another environment, and then try to form a complete picture, we can now put them into the LiveDoc and create that context through the text in that single document and get a better overall product. 

What is the key benefit of the Polarion solution?

– The main benefit of Polarion in our organization is bringing more of the different research and development functions and their representatives into the same environment. Instead of certain representatives working only with a complete document and others working with only individual work items, we are all working in the same environment with the same work items and the same context of those documents.

How has Taipuva helped you in the process?

– Taipuva has been our main partner in setting up the environment, hosting our environment and making specific configurations and holding training sessions for us to understand how to utilize Polarion even better. Additionally, they were partnering with us to perform our validation so that we can show that Polarion is validated according to our standard operating procedures.

The main lessons learned from validating Polarion?

– The tool itself already carries a lot of functions, which we didn’t have to delve deeper into. It’s more sort of our specific configuration and our specific needs and implementations to support those needs, which benefited the most from the validation. So the tool itself is well-prepared and well-proven.

Is this your first time at Taipuva Polarion Days?

– This is my first time. I think the most benefit I’ve gained here is I’m seeing how many people are struggling with the same issues. I think a majority of the attendees here are also trying to figure out how to communicate between stakeholders, how to maintain a consistent environment for their requirements and know how to manage their requirement engineering process. In a way, this is like therapy.

Can you summarize your talk?

– My topic today was the validation of Polarion in a medical QMS environment, (quality management system) environment. We’ve taken Polarion quite recently into use. With the previous tool, the main users were the test engineers, but now we are bringing more awareness to project management, software engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, as well as test engineers, on how to bring information more visible to the other team members.

What made you choose Polarion in the first place?

– We originally ended up with Polarion because the most distinct feature was the LiveDoc environment. Many tools offer the same benefits for the traceability of work items, history and management of work items, reviewing, approvals and such, but not many offer the same kind of singular environment where one can get more context to individual work items to form a more complete picture.

What would you like to share with new users in Polarion?

– I think the biggest thing for new users to understand is that Polarion is very configurable. Even if you’re presented with a certain configuration from the start, it is very configurable for any process. So even an existing process can be emulated in Polarion so that there’s less need to make changes to your process just because of a tool change. But then there are many benefits in Polarion where the process can be made more efficient once you’ve first adapted the tool for your use.

How do you see Polarion being a part of your company’s vision?

– I wish to see that in our organisation we have fewer instances of miscommunication, and fewer misunderstandings in the contents of our documentation, our requirements or test cases or work items in general. I believe Polarion provides a good platform for it.

Siemens Polarion^® ALM – take control

Get a holistic view, traceability and transparency for all product development and project management information. Everyone is aligned around what is being built while protecting integrity and compliance.

 

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Key takeaways so far from the event?

– I think the key takeaways have been that requirement engineering is difficult. It’s not much of a surprise though, I don’t think anyone has said that making requirements was easy.

What do you think is the meaning of Taipuva Polarion Days?

– I think the role of Taipuva Polarion Days is a place where different users are in the same room and can get that feeling of support and togetherness. Many people are dealing with the same issues and are trying to produce the same sort of results as we are.

Do you have any key learnings from your process you would like to share with more recent user organisations?

– It’s good to evaluate your processes and try to see where Polarion fits in very well out-of-the-box, and where it requires more specific configuration or adaptation. It is a very flexible tool, but you shouldn’t expect it to fulfil all your needs out-of-the-box.

What has Taipuva meant for you?

– Taipuva has provided our company with the Polarion instance, and they also manage our instance. They’ve provided us with training to get us started with Polarion. As we’ve learned more on our own, they’ve been able to provide additional information as well as troubleshoot some issues that we’ve found during our use.

Taipuva has just completed a successful Polarion Pilot project with a company that develops software for fighter jet planes. The pilot lasted three months and covered the use of Polarion for requirements management & test management in a DO-178C Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification compliant way.

DO-178C sets strict process requirements for traceability, independence and reviews & approvals. It may seem burdensome to fulfill such requirements, but with the help of right solutions it can be done quickly and efficiently. With Polarion it was easy to get to the desired results during the short pilot phase. The Polarion setup was ready for production use right after the pilot. The most time-consuming part of the pilot was migrating all the existing data from legacy systems to Polarion. Therefore, starting with a completely new project would have been even faster.

Some customer’s comments about the Taipuva-led pilot project

“Very well executed in just three months. Usually system rollout projects take much more time. Both the supplier and internal personnel did a great job.”

“The pilot project went well, Support was good and available when needed.”

Working with Polarion is surely better than our old ways of working. Having everything in the same system is great.”

“Polarion is a lot better system than the old testing solutions.”

TA is an IT application supporting cross-functional case management. The goal for TA for Scania was to have a solution for planning, case management and visualisation. 

Scania needed a practical handling of information and document sharing, but also a visualisation of work and progress. Since Scania is a large organisation, with a lot of teams onboard, TA was crucial to handle operational value systems and making sure that everyone worked in the same manner, now they can work in a more structured and agile way. There is a great overview and the search functionality for work items is fast and used a lot. Users can also create their dashboard easily. More responsibilities are now directly on the user, and they can plan their time accordingly. 

What brings you back to Taipuva Polarion Days?

– It’s interesting to meet the different people working with the same support issues or how to set up different configurations, and you learn a lot. Here you’ll get personal contacts and general knowledge. 

What was your presentation about?

– I talked about our implementation and the use of Polarion at Scania. We have 5 000 users more or less, and that’s a very special challenge. The key benefits so far have been that it has been easy to configure it and we have had more or less no downtime, Polarion has been very robust. There have been challenges also, for example, our maintenance organisation has been a problem, but that has nothing to do with Polarion. 

What’s your vision of Polarion within your organisation?

– I think that we would like to start to apply more of the out-of-the-box features that Polarion has, but to do that we need more resources. I appreciate trying to implement the out-of-the-box features because they are easy to implement, you don’t need to develop them on your own. So if we just get the resources, then we can do it quite quickly.

In what areas do you use Polarion?

– We use it within R&D, not in production, and it’s mainly case management. We also use Polarion when it comes to tests and requirements. I think we use more or less all of the features in Polarion, but not all over in R&D.

What are the key benefits?

– In general, if you compare it to 20 years back, web applications today are much easier than the software 20-30 years ago. It’s much easier to handle and easier to work with, and I think that emphasises the benefits. To change or to dare to go forward and apply for example Polarion.

How do you see Polarion being a part of your organisation in the future?

– Since we are growing, we would like to take Polarion to all our new stakeholders, which are international stakeholders in the US and China mostly now. I guess that will be a large challenge coming up, let’s say for maybe two or two or three years to come.

What’s the purpose of Taipuva Polarion Days?

– I hope from Taipuva’s point of view that you could inspire people and that it will of course lead to business in the long run. I think it’s a really good idea and it’s a lot of goodwill as well to be invited and have this possibility.

 Are there any key learnings you would like to share for more recent user organisations?

–  I think you need to have a maintenance organisation and, and be careful with the way you set it up and take that seriously because that’s needed in the long run.

What is your relation to Taipuva and what has been the importance of the knowledge capability from them?

– They took quite a large part of the configuration and information when we started up and since it’s been like four years now, we’ve had some personal contacts and relations and I think that’s great.