More Than a Document: An Industrial View on the Product Profile in Product Engineering Processes

Developing products in generations requires a forward-looking, interdisciplinary process that anticipates future user needs. Especially at the beginning of these development processes, defining the problem and the need is a crucial activity. In industry, this is represented by approaches such as requirement and specification documents, goal system modeling, technical processes, and the value proposition in the Business Model Canvas. Another possible approach is the product profile. The product profile offers a way to model need situations; however, there is no clear definition in the literature regarding its role, added value, and industry expectations in the integration into the engineering processes. These aspects are essential for communicating the product profile in academia and transferring it to industry. Therefore, this study used semistructured interviews to define eight roles, identify eight added values, and record seven expectations. This enabled a discussion on how the product profile differs from existing approaches.