Patent ID: 8145671

Claim:
A method of managing a development program for a product, including: a) providing an object oriented product structure classification scheme with a hierarchical product structure of product objects that define at least one configuration of the product using a parameter/requirements management system that includes one or more application servers, one or more user workstations, and one or more database servers, the one or more application servers comprising a product structure-driven requirements management tool accessible to the one or more user workstations and the one or more database servers storing parameter/requirements management data for the product structure-driven requirements management tool; b) providing a requirements classification scheme, including: i) capturing requirements for the product; ii) associating at least a portion of the captured requirements with one or more product objects of the product structure; iii) classifying the requirements associated with the product objects into external requirements and internal requirements based at least in part on the hierarchical product structure of a) and the requirement/product object associations of ii), wherein the external requirements include input and output requirements and the internal requirements include critical requirements; iv) linking at least a portion of the output requirements for at least one certain product object with one or more related input requirements for one or more other product objects; v) linking at least a portion of the input requirements for at least one select product object with one or more related critical requirements for the corresponding select product object; and vi) linking at least a portion of the critical requirements for at least one representative product object with one or more related output requirements for the corresponding representative product object; c) planning development and maturity of the product through one or more maturity levels associated with achievement of requirements associated with objects of the product structure; d) establishing in-process measures to determine a status of achievement of the planned development and maturity of the product; e) planning for one or more audits of conformance of one or more builds of one or more configurations of the product at one or more of the maturity levels for one or more requirements associated with one or more objects of the product structure; f) qualitatively assessing conformance of one or more requirements associated with one or more objects of the product structure for each of the one or more builds; g) quantitatively assessing conformance of one or more requirements associated with one or more objects of the product structure for each of the one or more builds; and h) utilizing the qualitative and quantitative assessments of conformance to identify, prioritize, and manage conformance risk during the development program as development of the objects of the product structure advance through the one or more maturity levels.