Title: A Groupware Architecture for Requirements Processes in New Product Development

Authors: Ahti Salo and Timo Käkölä

Status: Proc. of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Computer Society Press, Hawaii, January 5-8, 1999.


Keywords: Computer-mediated communication; Decision support systems; Groupware; Knowledge management; New product development; Organizational learning; Process maturity; Requirements management; Shared knowledge creation

An organization's ability to create successful products depends on how extensively it collects, analyzes, and utilizes requirements information in its product development. Recent advances in networking technologies, and groupware in particular, allow such information to be shared more effectively in distributed organizations; thus, these technologies hold considerable potential as means of shortening the cycle time and improving the quality of requirements processes. In this paper, we address issues in the design and implementation of groupware-supported requirements processes by drawing on experiences from large-scale industrial development projects within Nokia, one of world's largest telecommunications manufacturers. The primary contribution of the paper is the conceptual design of a generic, groupware-based requirements management system (RMS) which is postulated to help product development organizations improve their requirements processes through the leveraging of groupware support.