SUPPORTING CYCLE MANAGEMENT BY STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE ORGANISATIONAL DOMAIN IN MULTI-PROJECT ENVIRONMENT

Today many companies involved in product development usually run several development projects simultaneously. This multi-project environment increases the complexity that the management has to deal with, especially in managing the high amount of iterations (cycles) that are inherent in product development projects. In many cases, the management does not have an overview of how and to what extent different departments are involved in these cycles. This paper introduces a Multiple-Domain Matrix (MDM) based methodology for obtaining a snapshot overview of the level of involvement and interaction between different functional departments. The result of this methodology is an organisational map of development departments (organisational portfolio) that provides information to the management on how particular functional departments are involved in the development processes as well as the level of interaction with other departments and suppliers in the multi-project environment. Based on this information, managers can reach decisions on how to improve the information flow between these departments, which consequently supports cycle convergence and reduces cost and time to market.