1. Initial Situation

VDI Guideline 4520 is a standard issued by the Association of German Engineers (VDI) on the topic of Product Management. The aim of this guideline is to highlight the importance of this function for market success—particularly in the context of digital transformation—to the employees and managers responsible for product management. The current guideline describes a linear “Idea-to-Launch Process” from the perspective of product managers. However, product management itself is a more complex undertaking that, beyond the ramp-up phase, also involves many continuous aspects. The current standard lacks descriptions of this complex process system that surrounds the product development process. The objective of such a model would be to depict interface and communication issues at an operational level in a reduced and possibly optimized version.

The prevailing assumption is that processes only function effectively when they are documented transparently—an endeavor for which suitable modeling methods are necessary or at least helpful. One possible tool for this is Subject-Oriented Process Modeling, which will be applied in this work.

2. Research Goal / Research Questions

• What current theories exist on this topic from a process-oriented perspective?

• What does a subject-oriented model that covers all aspects of product management look like?

  • How readable or understandable is it, and how can it be optimized for accurate comprehension?

  • Are there parts that lend themselves particularly well or poorly to subject-oriented representation?

• Central Research Question: Who communicates with whom? What information is exchanged between the potential stakeholders and when? Which activities are performed by whom and in what sequence?

Note: If this topic is chosen as a Master's thesis, in addition to the theoretical investigation and modeling, a comparison with real-world industrial practices is also necessary. This would involve exploring which processes and types of communication are actually practiced in the field of product management—and possibly how the developed models are understood within those organizations.