Impact Matrix - it´s time for a change! Ideas for alternative renderings/concepts for easier change management

Hi community,

I am right now work on yet another custom CM process. It´s a typical process that affects multiple itemtypes, so my first plan was to do a custom version of the exiting Impact Matrix as seen in the Express ECO.

I have built heavy custom versions of the Impact Matrix a couple of times and I am familiar with the concept. But I am tired of doing it. It´s a working concept, yes, but from my POV there is still a lot of room for improving the way end users do their changes.

So instead of spending time for customizing the impact matrix again, I want to try to rebuild or at least to improve the concept on a general level.

Of course I don´t want to reinvent the wheel from the scratch. I want to preserve the existing data structure based on Affected Items. But I want to provide additional way to display/render/work with the data. 

Some ideas: (some of them I already use in the current Impact Matrix, so these are not just an illusory wish list)

- Make look&feel more flexible and intuitive
- Work with data with less clicking
- Improve Impact Matrix analysis for very large BOMs and complex structures
- Comparing of previous and new data
- Enable/disable upward/downward impact.
- More flexible change planning option so the change does not change items on runtime (fundamental problem)
- Rollback option
- Provide alternative renderings of the existing data. Impact Matrix is basically just a viewer/input helper window for the Affected Items. It should by possible to render the data in various ways. Instead of resolving a repeating structure, sometimes a grouping the data would help users to not get lost in the matrix.

I know that Aras partners offer custom CM processes. But they often only sell a few "easy-to-do" improvements and don´t address the hard stuff. I also don´t want to buy a dll based closed concept that is neither upgradable nor customizable.

Does anyone want to join the project or can share ideas? Can you recommend concepts from other PLM software vendors that we can use as inspiration? What feature do you miss in Aras Change management?

Any input welcomed!

Angela

  • Hi community,

    I don´t actively work on this topic, but I always look for ideas regarding this one.

    To keep the discussion active, here some new input.

    I right now work on a custom CM process. It turned out that CUI works shocking well for a custom "impact matrix like" user interface (if we ignore the fact that I spent hours to understand how to edit relationships from CUI tearoff menus cause of missing documentation and literally no similar CUI usage sample in my Innovator...thanks Aras Sweat smile  ) :

    I wonder if we can reuse this concept for a custom Impact Matrix. CUI is also supported inside TGVs, which could be used to render a multilevel tree.

    A second view could be used for a flat view of the Affected Items as seen above. The "Affected Items" tab is by default hidden cause it´s not secure to manipulate the Affected Items manually. But this additional safety could easily be provided with some custom CUI buttons. Often working with the Affected Items is faster than working with the Impact Matrix. So why not allow both views?

    One obstacle is still how to easy manipulate relationship changes. Maybe we can display them directly as third accordion, but I am not sure.

    Has anyone experience with the additional accordions?

    Let´s make change management great again! Sunglasses

    Angela