An IT Tool for Managing the Product Development Process

Throughout the last two decades a number of improved product development processes have been suggested that illustrate and clearly define the nature, scope and holistic representation of the issues involved in understanding and managing the product development process (PDP). The degree to which they have actually added value in the industry, even when lean principles have been incorporated, has been debated by many authors. Many agree that one of the main reasons for the above is that those processes/models are rarely implemented fully or the integrity of the embedded philosophy has been diluted through wrong adaptation. One such model of an improved PDP is the Process Protocol. This paper presents how the development of an IT tool can enable the easy and fast adaptation of the Process Protocol Model without loosing the integrity of the holistic approach and without diluting the Philosophies on which it was based. The IT tool adopts the Process Protocol model as a template with enough information that makes it appropriate but flexible enough to allow individual company innovations to be part of the model in a nonprescriptive nature.

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