Effective customer requirements management using an information supply based model

Managing customer requirements is a crucial process in any project, especially when these requirements usually keep changing throughout a project life cycle. Despite the high importance of customer requirement management in any project, there is no available customer requirements management tool that has an effective interface with project management tools. This paper presents a new information supply model for integrating customer requirements management with project management. The model proposed, an Information Supply Tool (IST), can be used to manage customer functional requirements for product design process, and to improve communication among managers, project team members, customers, and other stakeholders. The aim of IST model is to supply information about the product design processes for managers to support decision making. It also provides information about the design process status on all granulation levels. The benefits of this model include using resources rationally for projects, exclude duplication of jobs, increase quality of project decisions, and better support achieving customer requirement. Senior managers will be able to evaluate the current state of the project against desired product functions, and to analyze the impact of managerial decisions. Managers will be able to model their managerial actions and receive information about the possible consequences to improve customers benefit management. The model is introduced in the paper, and a case study is presented.