Real-time Release Readiness across Product Lines

By Ahmad Fatah, Customer Solutions Engineer, MKS Inc
In collaboration with Kurt Battick, Customer Solutions Engineer, MKS Inc

Do you have visibility into the release readiness of your products at any time in the lifecycle? Although seemingly obvious, the four areas that define product readiness are rarely considered holistically: Quality, Compliance, Functionality and Budget & Schedule. Product Release Readiness is vital - in order to forecast availability to customers, maintain customer confidence, meet tight, predicable product launch windows and provide quicker response time to issues as they arise.

The traditional approaches of milestone based development often lead to non continuous awareness along with the risk of filtered/massaged data. When this happens, the paradigm of component readiness (versus product) tends to creep in. From cradle to grave an SSLM, Software and System Lifecycle Management, based solution allows for full transparency at any point in the lifecycle of product development.

An SSLM solution provides real-time access to dynamically calculated data that allows for visibility into release readiness at any point of the lifecycle, not just at the milestones. The benefits of real time data are two-fold:

• Data is collected at the source of work automatically without impeding productivity


• Deviations are flagged immediately and corrective action can be taken in real-time

This translates into having access to a dynamic early warning system where full traceability produces objective and non-filtered data. Business logic can be defined based on the specific criteria and process. Individual project components no longer stand alone but can contribute to overall product status. Costs, schedules and quality measures all contribute to Product readiness. By utilizing and calculating metrics against real product deliverables, product metrics can be accessed instantly.

Product design & development today, requires a higher level of collaboration across all engineering disciplines, find out more...

Feel free to comment and let us know what metrics you have in place to determine product release readiness?