There is a customer requirement. A Product Line Manager (PLM, as a fancy name nowadays, was called product planner in a planning organization back to the old time when I worked at BNR) normally would add his or her value by explaining (and mostly interpreting) the requirement to R&D. Until the final release of the product, many R&D levels have been involved with possible miscommunications happened at each level. Let’s see how this new product has been built eventually, step by step … … while the PLM was off hook.
1. Requirement Captured
2. Negotiated between Planner & Designers
3. Functional Spec & Design (before reviews)
4. Functional Spec & Design (after reviews)
5. Detail Design
6. Implementation (after code inspection)
7. Unit Testing (after debugging)
8. System Testing (after robustness)
What the customer needs !!!
[The original idea was taken in the early 90’s from a frustrated software designer at Bell-Northern Research, a former research arm of Northern Telecom.]
