Seven steps toward regulatory excellence - Step 6 - Requirements Variant Management
By: Simone Bernardi, Anders Ekman, Celeris AB
On variants of things
There are various analogies between the game theory and the professional life. Listen to Fred Davis, British professional world cup snooker player, when he said that: “I think most people played both variants and regular games. It was a period when variants were very popular and there were a lot more variants being played at that time. Every week practically, it seemed someone would publish a new variant in a zine.” Think also about the game of checkers. Each of us got introduced to it as a child by some old brother, friend or relative, and only later learned about this being one of multiple variations of it. I played for example what I thought to be the “regular” game of checkers, with each player having 12 pieces and competing over a 8x8 squared board. Over time I discovered that what I thought to be the “regular” game of checkers was nothing else than a local variation of the game with a set of rules (like being forced to eat another piece or not, etc…) which my friends were used to play. What was thought to be the same game was one of various variants of it. And more the game itself experienced variations not only in its rules but also in its board and number of pieces. Think about (just to name a few): the HexDame, the King’s Court, the Alquerque, just to name a few. So, if you want to master the world of checkers you need to be able to master a full set of variations of the same.
Step 6 – Requirements Variant Management
Any professional working with product lifecycle management within an international firm, knows well that most of the product features, and the related requirements, are common to all markets whereas each market typically has a few market-specific requirements. In effect, the firm needs to build product variants to meet the needs of individual markets. The Medical Device industry is an industry that has a long tradition of developing product variants that will satisfy requirements, many of which are of regulatory nature, of distinct local markets.It is established that a well-thought product architecture will simplify the development and delivery of product variants with a high degree of reuse, thereby offering a firm competitive advantage. It however does not stop there. With the correspondence between requirements (being the WHAT) and architecture (being the HOW) there is further potential for efficiency gains by incorporating variant management as an intrinsic part of the requirements management practice.
Variant management techniques have been leveraged for decades by international firms with software-embedded physical products within highly regulated industries, such as the medical device industry and the automotive industry. See for example Gümmer at al. (2013) on a variant management system methodology example from for the mechanical parts from the automotive industry.It is our view that the underlying variant management techniques could offer competitive advantage also to firms operating within other industries. One such industry is the Banking industry, a highly regulated industry with a number of international firms. Firms within Banking and Insurance are used to quickly develop and deploy digital products to the market. Still this high speed (due to the absence of the manufacturing and logistic component) might be in conflict with the need for proper control and variant management. By adopting proper variant management techniques, a bank or an insurance company will leverage the same requirement base and core architecture, implying a large degree of reuse, a lower cost of maintenance and a swift reconfiguration to meet the needs of further markets.The Celeris Compliance Suite (CCS) offers variant management out of the box for banks and offers a great opportunity to tap into the engineering techniques from industries that have successfully used variant management for decades.
References: Gümmer, R., Junk, C., Rock, G. (2013). A Variant Management Based Methodology for the Requirements-Engineering Process of Mechanical Parts. In: Stjepandić, J., Rock, G., Bil, C. (eds) Concurrent Engineering Approaches for Sustainable Product Development in a Multi-Disciplinary Environment. Springer, London.Source: Seven steps toward regulatory excellence – Step 6 – Requirements Variant Management | LinkedIn
