3 ways our multi-project companion, Compose, boosts productivity

R&D teams of Medical Devices are continually challenged to not only swiftly deliver innovative solutions, multiple product offerings, and create multiple variant products tailored to meet diverse market demands and rigorous regulatory requirements. Maximizing productivity is essential in this high-stakes environment. Teams must find ways to efficiently manage their workflows, collaborate, adapt quickly, and ensure that each version of their software meets the highest standards of quality and compliance. With Compose, our multi-project companion, you can do just that.

Compose accelerates product development teams’ productivity by simplifying the usage of existing items or components in other projects while maintaining traceability so companies can get more products out the door. With Compose, you can include items that you want to keep identical to the source or you can copy items that you want to use as a baseline to be modified in other projects. Visual icons help teams identify which items are being used across other projects and include a link to take you directly to the other projects the items are being used in for enhanced visibility and team collaboration.

Keep reading to see how Compose maintains efficiency and quality across varied product lines and transforms constraints into catalysts for innovation and market success. 

Products with a lot of commonalities

It’s not uncommon for a company to reuse components or codebases across their different product lines. Establishing a uniform user interface and experience across products can significantly improve usability and user satisfaction. Healthcare providers often prefer software that is familiar and easy to use, reducing the learning curve associated with new technologies. Commonalities in design and operation can help create a consistent brand identity and user experience, fostering user trust and loyalty.

Commonalities can also reduce the time and resources needed for development and maintenance by reusing established, well-tested modules or functionalities across multiple products. This approach simplifies updates and bug fixes, as improvements to a shared component can benefit multiple products simultaneously, which saves you significant time and enhances your overall software quality and stability. Plus, having a standardized architecture or shared component makes it easier to scale products or expand to new markets by allowing for quicker adaptation without starting from scratch.

With Compose, if your team is planning to use a similar set of items or components in another product, like the user interface, you can easily copy them over to another project in a few clicks, maintain traces on the shared items, and continue working without spending hours recreating the items or relinking them in your project. 

Multiple variants products

Relying on a single product or a one-size-fits-all approach can pose significant risks if market conditions shift. Multi-variant products diversify a company's offerings and enhance resilience against market volatility. Moreover, customer needs differ due to various factors including geographical, regulatory, and clinical aspects, making it essential to cater to this diversity for long-term success.

Multi-variant products are designed to comply with the specific regulatory requirements of each market, which not only reduces the risk of non-compliance but also accelerates product approvals. By customizing software functionalities and features to meet regional healthcare regulations, companies facilitate quicker market entry.

Furthermore, adapting products to the unique clinical practices and preferences of different healthcare systems boosts user satisfaction and increases adoption rates. By developing variants tailored to the specific needs of their clientele, companies can expand their market reach and significantly enhance the effectiveness and relevance of their medical device software. This strategic approach ultimately contributes to improved patient outcomes across various health ecosystems.

With Compose, if your team is working in multiple markets or making custom products, you can easily reuse items that need to remain identical and reuse items that are going to be modified so teams can focus on moving forward instead of spending time rebuilding what already exists.  

Release cycle support using Branching & Merging

Branching & Merging enables teams to work on multiple product release versions in parallel thus streamlining the development and release process. Branching & Merging on its own has powerful features that make it easier for teams to work on bug fixes and security updates, new features that may not make it into the next release, test new features before rolling them out, and maintain multiple versions to support client needs or system compatibility. When combined with Compose, you have even more productivity gains and greater visibility into the different versions of the component being used across other projects or products you offer.

Let’s say you create a project for your login component, named Product A. Product A is where your team works everyday, so it’s always evolving. When you’re ready to release it, you create a branch of that product and name it Product A_V1. 

You need to use this login component in two of your other products. With Compose, you can add that branch into those products, keep the information identical or let it be modifiable, and maintain their traces. Let’s call those products Product B and Product C. 

A couple of months later, you’ve fixed some bugs in Product A and added a new feature and you’re ready to release it. You create a new branch and name it Product A_V2. Instead of going back to Product B and C and manually updating everything that has changed, you can switch the branch to the latest version saving you time and eliminating errors due to human entry which makes Compose a great companion to the Branching & Merging capability. 

Beyond productivity gains 

The ability to manage projects modularly is invaluable in the Software as/in a Medical Device (SxMD) industry. By breaking down projects into manageable components, teams can pull out what they need, when they need it to efficiently handle multiple projects, products, or versions while ensuring accuracy and maintaining traceability which is a critical requirement in regulatory compliance.

To learn more about Compose, contact us to request a demo with a product expert who can show you how Matrix Requirements can help you get your Medical Device to market faster.