Product Line Management

Portfolios

Product Managers can organize their company’s model versions and models into portfolios. The portfolio can be used to view roadmap and timeline reports for the contents of the individual portfolio.

Product Lines, Models, and Model Versions

Companies use product lines to publicize the model versions and services they provide. Product lines can contain any number of sub product lines. Product lines manage models and models manage model versions. Models give full visibility of all the builds created for the model versions or product configurations managed by that model. A product configuration is a specific combination of features and options.

Product Managers and Software Managers can create new builds to plan and manage model versions that fulfill specific customer needs. Additionally, a portfolio can be created that groups model versions and models to view the collective roadmap of those model versions and models.

Variants and their variant values and option groups and their options, which define variability, can be defined for a product line and are then available for any model or model version in that product line's hierarchy. Logical features and variability can be defined at the model level and are available for all model version revisions within that model. Of course, these features can also be defined for a specific model version revision.

Design Responsibility

Product Managers assign design responsibility when they create the product line. All objects use the Design Responsibility attribute. Design responsibility defines access security on all objects managed by that product line because it is inherited down the structure by models, model versions, and so on. The responsibility for individual items, such as logical features or a specific model version revision, can be assigned to a different organization as needed.

The design responsibility ties users and their roles to the policy of the related object. If Product Managers and System Engineers have access to modify the object, then only those users with roles that belong to the responsible design organization have access to modify those objects.

For example, a company called Car Co. has several employees with the role Product Manager. The model version "Car 2017" has been assigned to the Engineering Engine department. The Engineering Engine department has design responsibility for Car 2017. This means only the Product Managers assigned to this department have access to Car 2017. All other users with the Product Manager role who do not belong to this department do not have access to this model version. They default to whatever access users with the Global User or Employee roles have.