Managing changes to engineering products through the co-ordination of human and technical activities

Abstract

Changes to engineering products need to be effectively co-ordinated with other members in the development team. Current approaches to managing change have limitations and often require further manual, ad-hoc activities to co-ordinate each change. This results in an inconsistent approach to change management. Our approach uses change processes to manage changes to products. Change processes are modelled using UML Activity Diagrams, which clearly show how human and technical activities are co-ordinated for each type of change operation. Change process enactment has been achieved in a research prototype by integrating workflow technology with a development system that supports versioning. This process-based approach to change management provides standardised, auditable change processes, which support change throughout the product development lifecycle. This negates the need for manual, ad-hoc activities to co-ordinate changes, resulting in a more consistent approach to managing change. © Springer-Verlag 2004.