Efficient Engineering Change Management (ECM) is an important competency in New Product Development. The increasing use of Highly Iterative Product Development as an agile development paradigm induces substantial time-variability in the requirements of ECM as products progress from early stage development to full series production. As a result, new functional-prerequisites for successful ECM arise in addition to those normally necessary. To address these additional, time-dynamic requirements, this study creates a method for the continuous adaption of ECM using the concept of complexity management.

A heuristic framework combining a detailed literature analysis and expert interviews forms the basis of the method’s design. Hereby, complexity drivers and complexity enablers of ECM are identified. The study determines causal relationships between these complexity elements and presents specific measures suitable to allow practitioners to influence the level of complexity inherent in ECM systems. The findings are integrated into complexity-oriented models. Based on these models, a method is presented that permits the adaptive design of ECM to address time-variable management requirements across the product lifecycle.