COE Enhancement Request Process
By Gary McCue

The primary objective of the COE Development Planning Council (DPC) is to assure that the CATIA users' needs for enhanced functionality are properly communicated to the Dassault Systemes developers. This includes Enhancement Requests as well as Top Strategic Requirements. Dassault's Strategic Enhancement Request (SER) system has been an integral part of the COE DPC process since the spring of 2000.

Dassault's SER system was implemented to gather, prioritize and track enhancement requests originating from multiple sources including the American, European and Japanese user organizations. This process was intended to complement, rather than replace, other processes for submitting and tracking enhancement requests such as the Program Enhancement Request (PER) process and Customer Validation Internal (CVI) process. COE has been a major force behind the development and deployment of Dassault's SER system.

Enhancement requests must be submitted to COE in writing. Verbal requests identified during a DPC session at a COE conference will be written on the appropriate Enhancement Request form and submitted by the DPC chairperson. Enhancement requests may also be submitted electronically at any time using the COE Web site. Enhancement requests submitted via the Web site are emailed to the appropriate DPC chairperson.

Once the chairperson has received the request, it is reviewed by the DPC and the IBM and Dassault Domain Managers for completeness and appropriateness. If the request is incomplete, the DPC chairperson will attempt to obtain more information from the submitter before forwarding the request to Dassault. If the request is not appropriate for the SER system, the request will be rejected and the submitter will be advised as to why it was rejected and how they might proceed. For example, if the request is believed to be a defect, the submitter will be directed to the Problem Management System (PMR) established by IBM and Dassault.

Once accepted by the DPC, the DPC will develop a consensus as to how many users or companies will benefit from the enhancement and how big a benefit will be realized. These criteria will be used to establish the SER priority. Next, the DPC chairperson enters the request into Dassault's SER database and informs the submitter that his or her request has been submitted to Dassault.

Once the request has been entered in to the SER database, the Dassault Domain Leader will either:

1. request more information from the DPC chairperson (status = "in work")
2. close the request as "refused" (e.g. not compatible with planned product development)
3. close the request as "implemented", but not yet be generally available or
4. accept the request (status = "capitalized").

If the request is accepted, the Dassault Domain Leader will generate a "public" SER which is visible by others with access to the SER database, but does not have as much detail as the original SER and change the status to "under analysis". The Dassault Domain Leader will also determine if the work is planned (status = "accepted planned" or "accepted unplanned") and identify when the enhancement will be implemented. When coding is complete, the Dassault Domain Manager will change the status to "implemented."

The DPC chairperson has access to the SER database and is responsible for reporting the status of each SER within his or her domain during subsequent COE conferences. Once the requested enhancement becomes generally available, the DPC is expected to review the enhancement and determine if the requirement has been met. If it has, the DPC chairperson will change the status in the Dassault SER database to "closed." If the requirement has not been met, the DPC will discuss the situation with the Dassault Domain Leader and arrive at an appropriate course of action.

The COE organization and Dassault have agreed on metrics to measure how well the SER process is working. These metrics will be reported during a general session at each conference.

For the SER Process Period: 10/2000 through 04/2001. Prior to the Fall 2000 COE Conference, there were 175 open enhancement requests. During Fall 2000 COE, the SER process received 52 enhancement requests from our DPC Working Sessions. The COE SER process managers made up of DPC Chairmen evaluate all requests for validity, duplication, strategy and completeness. Of the 227 open SERs DS accepted 42, refused 25, implemented 33 and 127 are still under consideration/investigation.

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CATIA V5 NC Campaign
By David Aber

A CATIA V5 NC campaign was conducted at the Spring National Conference. Participants were "Introduced to the V5 NC Products" in a breakout session given by the Development Manager of the Manufacturing Division at Dassault Systemes -Mr. Alain Quemat. The participants also experienced the look, feel, and functions of the new software in the COE Technifair with V5 NC product demonstrations by Michael Stephens. The campaign's final segment provided insight into the part programming productivity tools in the session "Productivity with V5 NC Manufacturing" presented by Dr. Juergen Lauscher.

The three finalists in the V5 NC Campaign were:
David Boye - Karl Schmidt Unisia
Jim Dixon - Cessna Aircraft
Alex Lyakhovich - Multax Corporation

Each of these finalists received an IBM Wordpad. The campaign was sponsored by the IBM PLM Marketing Team and the COE Process Interest Committee's - Manufacturing Division.

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Education is Sharing
By Dave Ballard

Everyone remember the story of the schoolyard bully, the one who goes around beating everyone up until he runs across that one person that is tougher than him self? The moral of the story being that everyone everywhere has someone tougher or smarter than them self. In every interaction, there is going to be someone who has knowledge, and someone who is seeking the knowledge. When coming to a COE conference, some folks don't realize they have something to share, because they think what they know is common knowledge, or they are the greedy one on a power trip, feeling smug about their superiority. The value of what you receive from participating in a conference is directly proportional to what you put into it. If you are coming to the conference to vacuum up knowledge, then perhaps it's time to turn the hose around and give back?

How can you share? COE as an organization is run by a group of highly motivated and dedicated group of volunteers. Additional help and volunteers are generally welcome to get involved. Help is not only needed in the organization infrastructure itself, but to give presentations and provide insight into what might be of interest for future material. You can submit an abstract through the COE Call for Presentations Page.

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