CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

16 October 2007

Product News

Telelogic Focal Point 6.1 Offers Microsoft Project Integration for Optimized Product Management

Telelogic announced that Telelogic Focal PointT now integrates with Microsoft® Project® to help organizations optimize their product requirements management processes while making value-based decisions.

Through the integration with Microsoft Project announced today, Telelogic Focal Point 6.1 gives product managers visibility into project schedules, for a complete product management solution that improves product value and increases agility through the entire product lifecycle. Focal Point's visualization, prioritization, planning, and analysis capabilities help product managers set the scope of product development based on objective requirements. This value-based approach accelerates time-to-market and helps eliminate "emotional" requirements.

"Where Telelogic Focal Point comes into its own is in the dynamic way that the central repository of requirements, benefits, and cost estimates can be integrated in a very visual manner. Thus, users can interact with the information held within the solution, selecting and de-selecting alternatives to provide the most value for the least potential cost within any particular product version," said Tim Jennings, Research Director, Butler Group. "In our recent Technology Audit on Focal Point we identified the need to integrate its product planning capabilities with detailed project planning. With the new Microsoft Project integration, Focal Point now provides a better link between product management and development project management, helping product development organizations to stay on track with delivering product releases that will be valuable to the customer and the business."

"Product managers fight a daily battle to balance scope, resources and time-to-market. Most product failures are a result of poorly defined product requirements or changing business priorities that impact all three of these factors," said Ingemar Ljungdahl, Chief Technology Officer at Telelogic. "Focal Point gives these managers the tools they need to implement a value-driven product management strategy. The additional capabilities provided by our new integration with Microsoft Project further enhance product management by giving product managers the visibility they need into the status of product development projects."

With Telelogic Focal Point, organizations can focus their resources on the products that will provide the highest value by selecting the right requirements for the right markets based on the value they can deliver to that market. Focal Point automates idea capture, making it easier to gather feedback from customers and internal stakeholders. This allows product managers to have greater focus on measuring the value for each product, and enabling development teams to build project plans directly from the requirements while supporting product management best practices. Through value-based selection, product managers can balance value, timelines and resource availability to ensure success of a product, even before the development process begins.

Telelogic Focal Point 6.1 will be available in November, 2007.

Related Announcement: Earlier this year, Telelogic introduced Focal Point Focus on Product Management, a web-bases solution based upon best practices and existing product management frameworks. See the release at http://www.telelogic.com/company/news .

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