Customising software products in distributed software development a model for allocating customisation requirements across organisational boundaries

Requirements engineering plays a vital role in the software development process. While it is difficult to manage those requirements locally, it is even more difficult to communicate those requirements over organisational boundaries and to convey them to multiple distribution customers. This paper discusses the requirements of multiple distribution customers empirically in the context of customised software products. The main purpose is to understand the challenges of communicating and allocating customisation requirements across distributed organisational boundaries. We conducted an empirical survey with 19 practitioners, which confirmed that communicating customisation requirements in a DSD context is a significant challenge. We therefore propose a model for allocating customisation requirements between a local, customer-based agile team and a distributed development team that uses a traditional development approach. Our conjecture is that the model would reduce the challenge of communicating requirements across organisational boundaries, address customers’ requirements and provide a focus for future empirical studies

Understanding the customer benefits of customisation: Case surfboard

Customisation is one strategy to involve customers in the design process. However, qualitative empirical studies on customisation in different product contexts are scarce. This paper investigates the benefits customers perceive in craft customisation where they are actively involved in the customisation with the designer. The case of this study is a high involvement custom product, a surfboard. Findings derived from qualitative interviews with surfers (N=22) reveal the perceived benefits in the three distinct phases of customisation: pre-customisation, during which the decision to customise is made; customisation process, during which the product is customised; and product usage. The source of the found benefits are the product, process or customisation itself and they can be classified to functional, emotional, experiential, symbolic, aesthetic, personal, social, epistemic, creative, and hedonic. The benefits vary in occurrence during the different customisation phases. Based on the findings, we present a model for the benefits in the three phases of customisation. The model can be used when implementing craft customisation as a design strategy.Keywords: customisation, benefits of customisation, phases of customisation, high-involvement product, surfboard

Knitwear customisation as repeated redesign

Producing large numbers of garment variants will only be economically viable if it requires very little human effort. But garment customisation cannot always be fully automated. Applying grading rules maintain the same details but sometimes achieves a different overall effect; but the customer expects the same overall effect and is less concerned about details. Choosing between alternative customisations requires a human designer's trained perceptual judgement. Therefore a viable mass customisation support system must support the repeated redesign of a garment by combining automatic design with fast human editing. Evaluating and modifying the suggestions of others is a natural and efficient activity for designers. This paper describes two prototype automatic design systems exploring techniques that could be used for mass customisation of knitted garments – in which the shape and patterns are indivisibly linked. An early pattern placing system that automatically altered both shape and pattern parameters in a variety of alternative ways. A shape design system that generates technically correct and consistent garment shapes from a set of measurements and a verbal description; it works independently of sizes, recalculating the shape for each new set of measurements. Starting from the system's suggestions, designers can very quickly tweak the new design to fulfil their aesthetic intentions

Personalization, customization and bespoke: Increasing the product offer

It could be said that true luxury products are defined through skill, connoisseur- luxury ship, rarity, craftsmanship and innovation. Luxury brands on the other hand are customization defined by illusions of luxury, fashion, authenticity, lifestyle, aspiration, the global fashion market and profit. Increasingly luxury brands have introduced options to custom- manufacture ize and personalize their products to enhance their offer and thereby creating technology the perception that the customer is purchasing something individual. However, branding these options within the realms of the luxury brand do nothing more than offer craftsmanship variations on a theme. Component pieces within an existing product range are retail produced and offered for sale as part of an existing product category. Offering a customized product changes the perception of the consumer. They believe they are buying something different, but this is far from the reality. Luxury brands offer customization to attempt to diversify and add value to their product offer. If one considers craftsmanship and innovation as core components in creating differentiation between luxury and luxury branded products, it could then be argued that traditional crafted products and the integration of digital technologies challenge the status quo. As customization and personalization are already occupying a place of growing significance and include viable modes of industrialized production, the product offer lacks the integrity that would be associated with a handmade luxury product.Peer reviewe

Product customisation: an empirical study of competitive advantage and repeat business

Empirical evidence is presented from 24 UK based manufacturing companies, all offering a degree of product customisation, with most having a significant Engineer-to-order (ETO) element. The majority of the companies are SME’s, with the associated limited managerial resources. The evidence addresses the issues of competitive advantage, including a detailed investigation of the strategic importance of repeat business. It contrasts its results with those generally found in the literature and concludes that there are significant differences in the order winners/ qualifiers. In particular, the evidence suggests that customisation is an order qualifier rather than an order winner; as it is increasingly unlikely that competitors will only offer a more standard product. Thus alternative order winners are needed and often price becomes the most significant factor, rather than being a mere order qualifier. Four different types of repeat business are then identified and the strategic importance of repeat business is discussed. It is indicated that for some ETO companies, repeat business is perceived to be an important method to reduce costs and achieve business stability. However, a number of the other companies studied saw repeat business as infeasible and hence need to find other ways to reduce costs and improve company performance measures, such as lead times. Future research to extend this work into a longitudinal study is proposed. Issues to explore are how the importance of repeat business has changed, and how the companies have evolved in terms of the degree of customisation offered versus that offered by their competitors

Simulating intertwined design processes that have similar structures: A case study of a small company that creates made-to-order fashion products

The authors use simulation to analyse the resource-driven dependencies between concurrent processes used to create customised products in a company. Such processes are uncertain and unique according to the design changes required. However, they have similar structures. For simulation, a level of abstraction is chosen such that all possible processes are represented by the same activity network. Differences between processes are determined by the customisations that they implement. The approach is illustrated through application to a small business that creates customised fashion products. We suggest that similar techniques could be applied to study intertwined design processes in more complex domains.The case study was carried out as part of Considerate Design for Personalised Fashion funded by the EPSRC/AHRC Design in the 21st century programme. The context of a multi-project environment was analysed as part of the EU Framework 7 CONVERGE project CP-FP 228746-2.Post-prin

Perspectives of mass customisation and modularisation in health service delivery : a scoping review

Mass customisation and modularisation are considered means to enhance patient-centredness and control increasing healthcare expenditures. The purpose of this study is to identify existing knowledge regarding the application of mass customisation and modularisation in healthcare delivery while focusing specifically on outcomes. A scoping review was conducted with various combinations of search terms using Scopus. Nearly 2,000 studies were identified of which 18 met inclusion criteria. Patient experience, customisation, and the economic impact on service delivery were analysed. Mass customisation and modularisation may be applicable in healthcare. The model may increase patient satisfaction. However, more knowledge of the outcomes of mass customisation is needed. As the number of studies in this area is limited, more empirical mixed methods research on the implementation and outcomes of mass customisation is needed to understand the expected benefits and to determine the possible effects on patient satisfaction and financial implications.Peer reviewe

The development of a novel standardisation-customisation continuum

Published work on product-oriented customisation lacks clarity in establishing how it is characterised, how it is bounded, and how one would define increasing levels of customisation. This paper describes the development of a standardisation-customisation (S-C) continuum which consists of 13 distinct intervals, starting with “standardisation”, or absence of customisation and ending with “evolution customisation”, or absence of standardisation. Each interval is defined using nine characteristics that collectively define the boundaries of the intervals within the continuum. Analysis using a randomly selected sample of products from a range of industries has demonstrated the continuum’s capability for distinguishing the associated level of S-C. Furthermore, no industry investigated develops products at each level of S-C, however, when combined all industries do. The number of possible levels of S-C tends to depend on the product’s complexity and number of components. The continuum framework clarifies the concept of customisation, provides a scale for determining the product’s customisation and supports the analysis of markets and industries against S-C

Suppliers versus lead users: examining collaboration in mass customisation

Mass customisation has been hailed as the manufacturing paradigm of the future, and has accordingly received much academic interest. Nevertheless, it is important to gain a better understanding of the ways in which mass customisation performance may be enhanced, in the light of the number of reported failures of mass customisation ventures. This thesis explores the use of collaboration in product development processes as a means of increasing mass customisation operational performance. The two collaborative partners of interest are suppliers and lead users ― a specialised subset of users. The effects of lead users in the product development processes of mass customisation have not previously been evaluated, nor has their value been compared to that of suppliers. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to investigate the relative effects of collaborating with suppliers and lead users in the product development processes on mass customisation. This is achieved by measuring mass customisation operational performance in terms of four attributes derived from the literature: development cost, development time, customer influence and product scope. Hierachical regression analysis of survey data collected from two hundred and fifty-one UK consumer products manufacturers revealed a significant positive relationship between lead user collaboration and all four mass customisation operational performance attributes, while supplier collaboration was found to positively affect three of the four attributes, with the exception of customer influence. In addition, analysis revealed that lead user collaboration had a greater effect on the operational performance than supplier collaboration. These results give a valuable indication to scholars as well as manufacturers of the importance of lead users in the product development processes of mass customisation