Proposal assignment

Purpose

This document defines the systematic approach by which Corwin Corporation manages requirements when undertaking a new project. The requirements management system establishes the guidelines for creating requirements documents, setting requirements attributes, and managing traceability of the requirements. This document also details the process by which requirements can be changed during the project, ensuring agreement between internal teams and customers. This document uses established Corwin Corporation standard work to define the Requirements Management Plan for use in the Peters Company project.

Requirements

Requirements Planning

Initial requirements for the Peters Project were obtained through a series of phone call interactions between Gene Frimel, Vice-President of Engineering at Corwin Corporation and Frank Delia, Vice-President of Marketing at the Peters Company. The detailed requirements were provided in the Statement of Work sent by Peters. Further requirements, including an initial engineering test matrix, were included in the proposal returned by Corwin. At a minimum, the remainder of the test matrix is an outstanding requirement that will be completed later, following the procedures laid out in this document. Other requirements may also arise that will be added as well.

Requirements Tracking

Because this is a research project with a short turnaround time, it is anticipated that changes will be made rapidly, including changes to the requirements. For this reason, it is imperative that the requirements, and changes thereto, be tracked carefully. To ensure all members of the team are aware of the changing requirements, all must be documented in writing. It is anticipated that most of the requirements will be defined by the Statement of Work, but additional requirements or further detail of the initial requirements must be captured in a Coordination Memo or notes from a Requirement Change Review. Corwin Corporation will vault these documents to its Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software with the appropriate revision letter. Changes or revisions to the requirements documents must follow the change process, detailed below. Following an approved change, the Statement of Work will be updated, and the Revision rolled to the next number.

Requirements Reporting

As part of this project, Corwin Corporation and Peters Company will hold weekly meetings, wherein Status Reports will be provided that cover any significant changes made to the requirements. Since this is a fast-paced project and Peters will have an on-site representative, it is recognized that requirements may change more rapidly than on a weekly basis. However, it is the Corwin project manager’s responsibility to document any changes and formally report them out in the weekly status reports. These will be submitted to Corwin and Peters management, so the project progress can be monitored.

Configuration Management

Change Initiation

After the Statement of Work and the Project Plan have been approved by both companies and vaulted to be stored in the PLM, any changes to the requirements must follow the change management process (see Figure 1). As mentioned above, the change request must be documented in a Coordination Memo to ensure traceability of the change.

Receive Change Request

Baseline Scope

Review Change Request

Assess Impact

Determine Decision

Update Documentation

Change Impact Analysis

The proposed change must be reviewed by the Corwin and Peters project managers/on-site representative, as well as a member of Corwin Corporation management. The assessment of the impact of the change must be provided, and consider the following factors:

· Technical impact on product formulation, material specifications, bills of materials, technical documents, design documents, project documents

· Technical work to be done by engineers

· Documentation to be updated

· Meetings to be conducted

· Impacts on the project schedule and other impacted tasks

· Impact on the project budget

· Quality management work to ensure change is documented and approved

· Cost of assessing the change request

Change Authorization Levels

As stated above, the review team must include representatives from both Corwin and Peters, as well as a member of Corwin Corporation management. Technical changes should include Dr. Royce, the VP of Engineering, while programmatic or financial changes should include Gene Frimel, the VP of Marketing. The review team must agree to change the requirements; otherwise the requirements revert to those previously established, through Statement of Work and/or other agreed-upon changes.

Requirements Traceability

Given the relatively high likelihood that requirements may change, the following plan will be implemented to ensure traceability of the changes. These procedures will vary slightly depending on the type of item being changed.

Documents, primarily specifications, will have a revision letter on the title page of each document. The main storage location for specifications and other project documents will be within the Corwin Corporation PLM system. This system has the ability to vault and store current and former versions of each document, so a revision history will be available following the changes.

This project also incorporates physical items, such as test specimens and rubber formulations. These will also require traceability. This will be done through the use of unique part numbersfor each formula/sample. The samples themselves will be kept in locked storage cabinets in the laboratory so the unique formula for each can be maintained.

The project manager shall have control over revising all documents. Engineering staff will maintain the samples in the engineering lab.

Requirements Prioritization Process

If a product formulation cannot be found to meet all the requirements, it may be necessary to select a product that meets only some. In anticipation of this scenario, all requirements shall be prioritized based on the following model:

· Must Have – means failure to implement the requirement will result in the failure of the entire project.

· Should Have – important requirements, but failure to implement the requirement does not automatically imply failure of the project.

· Nice to Have – A desirable but not extremely important requirement

Prioritization of the requirements will be done in a collaborative manner between Corwin and Peters. It is anticipated this will be done in the form of an event at Corwin Corporation. The project teams from Corwin and Peters, as well as the appropriate members of management, shall work through the requirements and prioritize them together. At the end of this event, all requirements will be prioritized; changes to priority level must go through the requirement change procedure outlined above.

Product Metrics

A significant risk in undertaking a project such as this with incomplete requirements is the possibility of getting into an infinite loop of design iterations. If the requirements are changed during the design process, all the progress toward the initial requirements will be wasted. With the project set up to a fixed budget, Corwin Corporation is particularly sensitive to this occurring. Therefore, the metrics to be used will be a combination of technical metrics to the rubber formulation, and project metrics to ensure progress toward a defined set of requirements. These shall include the following:

· Temperature Range (degrees C

· Hardness (Shore A)

· Max Compression Set (%)

· Min Tear Resistance (kg/cm)

· Min Tensile Strength (MPa)

· Color

These are the categories for the high-level requirements for the product. Tracking progress toward the desired ranges allows Corwin to understand how close they are to an acceptable formulation. Other metrics will include:

· Test iterations (25 allotted in Statement of Work)

· Labor hours invested in project (impacts budget)

· Progress to Milestones A, B, C vs schedule

· Estimated material production cost for current formulation

· Estimated production yield – failures per million parts

These metrics will track any instances of scope creep in test iterations, budget or schedule. Additionally, these metrics are forward-looking to the anticipated 5-year production run with the Peters Company to ensure long-term profitability of the design. Not only must the current project remain on schedule and under budget, but the eventual production run must be anticipated to be profitable or the research program was unsuccessful.