ABSTRACT
Overview The accurate translation of customer requirements into the design of products and services is a formal process in which frequent communications between external customers and key internal stakeholders is essential. In this translation process, there are several key measures of the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization’s design process as it relates to external customer, internal stakeholder, and the larger organizational needs and requirements. One of the more important measures of a design process is its overall cycle time. Cycle time measures the length of time a project team requires to gather customer requirements, translate them into detailed specifications, and create new products and services or modify existing ones. The goal is to produce a product or service that meets market requirements relative to its features, functions, cost, and other requirements. Cycle time is so important that in some industries the first organization to commercialize a new product or service will obtain a significant percentage of the market shares for the entire life cycle of the product or service. Life cycle refers to the demand for a product or service as measured in units sold or sales revenue relative to its introduction, growth, and maturity and decline phases. Commercializing a new product or
service on schedule is one important goal, but products and services must also be commercialized at a high quality level to meet their performance and cost targets and be within a project’s budget. Another important measurement of a design project’s success is the number of changes made both prior and after a new or modified design has been commercialized. A higher number of design changes to a new or modified product will lower its profitability, increase its commercialization cycle time, and lower customer and stakeholder satisfaction. It should be noted that these types of issues can be minimized or prevented by following good software design practices. In this chapter, we will discuss the translation of external customer and internal stakeholder needs and requirements using the concept of Kano needs and value analysis in the context of several prioritization tools. These will be discussed using the e-commerce portal example, which was introduced in earlier chapters. At the end of this chapter, we will link the requirement’s translation process to Agile Project Management (APM) and scrum.
