Patent ID: 8326870

Claim:
A method of managing a development program or a product, including: a) designating a product-level user with rights to access and manage a hierarchical product structure of product objects that define at least one configuration of the product; b) building and managing the product objects of the hierarchical product structure; c) associating a first group of attributes with each product object to facilitate display of views of the hierarchical product structure or portions thereof arranged by one or more of product structure, product object, attribute, and attribute group; d) designating one or more object-level users, wherein each object-level user is granted rights to access and manage one or more product objects and corresponding subordinate levels in the hierarchical product structure; and e) defining the rights to access and manage the one or more product objects of the hierarchical product structure such that the rights to access and manage each product object are individually defined for each object-level user and each attribute associated with the corresponding product object with respect to the object-level user's access to the attribute and the ability of the object-level user to manage the attribute; wherein the product objects include one or more virtual integration objects and a plurality of material objects; the method further including: f) adding rights to access and manage a virtual integration object structure comprised of the one or more virtual integration objects and associated with the at least one configuration of the product to the product-level user's rights defined in a).