Design Automation Strategies

Despite having 200 downloads on this site, I really believe cad managers should be selective in the number of custom tools they deploy.  Every custom tool requires support, testing, communication, and training. And, if it's an application you created, then it also requires development. This may not be an issue when you have a small design operation of say 15 people, but start to scale your design team and costs begin to increase rapidly. 

My current team supports design and graphics technology across three key business operations with 1500 users. A little better than a quater of these use MicroStation, a few pockets use specialty product design tools like U4ia, and most use Adobe Creative Suite - Photoshop, Illustrator, and In-Design. In all, we manage an inventory of more than a hundred "packaged-off-the-shelf" design and graphics applications. This is too many applications to provide a high level of support. Imagine if we add ten customizations for each application. That would give us 1000 functional features on top of the feature set available in the base application. Some applications are more extensible than others but on average this is a good estimate for the number of additional applications we have to support.

There are many strategies we employ to manage complexities brought about by scale, but there are a couple of approaches that I think apply to both large and small organizations.

Tiers

Because of the large number applications this team manages, it's impossible to understand all functional features and support each with the same level of understanding. Our engineers are smart, but their bandwidth is limited. To account for this, we implement basic strategies for life cycle management and categorize each application based on top, mid, and bottom tier. 

Top tier applications are business critical. Without them some process within the organization can't function - like MicroStation for building construction, and In-Design for marketing promotions. The top tier applications get special attention with regard to enhancements and customization. Development trends are monitored and close relations are maintained with these software vendors. 

Mid-tier applications are less likely to receive a high-level of support, upgrades are made on a limited basis, and they are deployed "out of the box" with no customization. Bottom tier applications only get attention when the business team indicates there is a need. 

Bottom tier applications don't receive any attention at all. The business must self-support, and typically deployments involve fewer than five users. These applications, if not functional pose little if any risk to the business. 

Business Value

New applications, new hardware, and customizations are only deployed if they add value to the business. A new technology should either fill a gap allowing us to do something we've never been able to do before, or it should improve a process making us more efficient. This is usually easier to do for our engineers than it is for our creative artists - not that both don't find new ways of increasing business value, it's just that engineers are more often process focused and can frame their needs in terms of cost savings. It's difficult to prove positive net present value from artwork. Whose to say that artwork created with a larger monitor is better than the artwork made with a smaller monitor? Of course, as enablers we can focus on precision of input and ability to see more of the drawing at once allowing the designer or artist to make better decisions.  

I believe both of these strategies can and should be applied to design teams of any size. Be aware of when you are implementing tools just because you can, or because they are cool. There's always a need for productivity tools, but we don't need to implement animated icons if there is no functional reason to do so.

What do you do to manage design software? Do you also have scale challenges? Also, let me know if strategy discussions are useful to you.