Cross-industry sectoral study: Interactions and challenges of requirements engineering in the early phase of product development

Abstract

Product development is undergoing a profound change: Digitization, Industry 4.0 or the interconnected end-To-end product are trends that offer great innovation potential across industries, but strongly influence the development of new product generations in the product portfolio. In addition, many industry sectors such as automotive product development have in recent years greatly optimized common parts and platform strategies in order to achieve synergetic cost reductions. This raises the question of how conflicting requirements of customers and providers can be taken into account simultaneously in the early phase to guarantee an optimum combination between cost input and innovation potential. The aim of the cross-industry sectoral study in this paper was to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges of requirements engineering and the individual use of existing knowledge in early development phases. For this purpose, a workshop (consisting of five individual sessions with 8-16 participants each) was conducted by two independent moderators within the framework of an expert forum, the re:work Smart Requirements Engineering 2019. Building on the discussion of the workshop results, essential findings were consolidated with the participants at the end of each session and fields of action were synthesized. The survey clearly illustrated that regardless of company size or professional experience, the use of the reference system was considered a genuine success factor, which was unanimously not identified as "creativity hindering". Short iteration cycles, even in large companies, are necessary to validate the consideration and integration of customer, user and provider benefits. Furthermore, the creation of a uniform language, comprehensible structures and models is necessary. The respondents pointed out that functions are suitable as a link between properties and technical realization for evaluating the maturity level of a product specification. In addition, a consistent understanding of how to utilize the reference system can enable a structured product specification in the early phase of product development of new product generations.