Evaluation of a Descriptive Approach for Product Portfolio Modeling – A No-Success Story and What we can Learn From it

Increasing product variety and shorter life cycles require new descriptive approaches to advance multiple products in product portfolios. This article focuses on the support, application, and success evaluation of an initial descriptive model for the advancement of product portfolios. For this purpose, requirements for the evaluation are determined. A workshop concept was developed and evaluated with 161 participants divided into test and control groups. While the evaluation shows no significant improvement between the groups, the analysis shows differences in performance and indications concerning the workshop concept, revealing learnings and limitations for conducting future studies.