Working in the Aerospace Industry has allowed me to see how various organizations utilize and implement their software tools and business process in a product development group. Mergers and acquisitions have also given me a great deal of insight and has been a fantastic source of education. Every company has unique processes, people and methods to accomplish a given organization’s goals, but shouldn’t we follow a standard? I would say yes, but there really is no standard for this and most companies allow software tools to evolve freely.

When implementing software, someone should be chosen to lead and evaluate how the software will be used to benefit the organization. Ultimately, the lead has some project management experience, understands the business process the software will be used to benefit, how the software fits within current IT solutions and how it will impact end users and other functional groups within the organization. In the IT world business analysts are used to ensure that software solutions meet all stakeholders’ needs and are implemented wholly. Business analysts with engineering experience are a rare breed and will fit more in the Senior Business Analyst level, but if someone of this caliber is not available, a project manager, a high caliber end user and functional area manager could fulfill the role.

The key to successful software tool implementation are people and planning. Involve the right people and manage the implementation of a new software tool just as you would an end product for your customers. For project planning, I would recommend following the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) framework, especially for large scale business system implementation such as Material Requirements Planning (MRP), Enterprise Resource Planning ( ERP), Product Data Management (PDM), Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) and or course Computer-Aided Design (CAD). For the people, select folks who own the process and are proficient in the use of computer-based software application.

Allowing software to evolve freely within an organization will cause problems down the road. If all systems and the capabilities of the software application are not used as intended, implementation of departmental standards, data redundancy and the ability to leverage design output can be greatly impeded and cause problems downstream.