Product Lifecycle Management – collaboration in a vertical world!

Recently, I have been reading some interesting posts beyond all the technical discussions related to PLM and AI. Is PLM becoming obsolete? Are we heading to a new type of infrastructure based on MCP agents? Are these agents an example of new ways of collaboration?

Collaboration – it pops up everywhere!

Chad Jackson wrote about the results of their Lifecycle Insights MBSE survey. For me, MBSE is the starting point for a modern product portfolio containing products based on hardware and software. MBSE is also a great example of working in what I call the connected mode.

Here is a quote from the article that triggered me:

The 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 organizations deploy MBSE is not simulation or architecture development. It is 𝐞𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 — at 67%. But here is the uncomfortable part.

Only 24% reported actually achieving collaboration as a business outcome. That is a 43-point gap between intent and result. Traceability is even worse — 48% deploy MBSE for it, 9% say they have realized it.

What if the problem is not that MBSE fails to deliver collaboration — but that most organizations 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 in measurable terms?

Chad Jackson’s article aligns with many other discussions I had with companies related to PLM (and MBSE) – itinspired me to focus this time on collaboration.

How do we measure collaboration?

My 2015 blog post has the same title: How do you measure collaboration? The post was written at a time when PLM collaboration had to compete with ERP execution stories. Often, engineering collaboration was considered an inefficient process to be fixed in the future, according to some ERP vendors.

ERP always had a strong voice at the management level—boxes on an org chart, reporting lines, clear ownership and KPIs flowing upward. You could see how the company was performing.

From the management side, accountability flows downward. The architecture of the organization mirrors the architecture of the product, and the architecture of the product mirrors the architecture of the organization.

We have known this for decades; it is Conway’s Law. Yet we are still surprised when silos emerge exactly where we designed them.

The Management Dilemma

In many of my engagements, the company’s management often struggles to understand the value of collaboration because there is no direct line between collaboration and immediate performance. Revenue can be measured. Cycle times can be measured. Defects can be measured. Even employee turnover can be measured.

But collaboration? What is the KPI?

It is a fair question. If something cannot be quantified, it becomes subjective and depends on gut feelings. And if it cannot be tied directly to quarterly results, it often becomes optional.

The problem is not that collaboration has no impact on performance – look at the introduction of email in companies. Did your company make a business case for that?

Still, it improved collaboration a lot, and sometimes it became a burden with all the CC-messages and epistles exchanged.

Collaboration has an impact, deeply and systematically. But its impact is indirect, delayed, and distributed. It reduces friction, can improve shared understanding and prevent expensive rework.

The return on investment on collaboration is real, but it does not show up as a clean, linear metric.

For a hierarchical and linearly structured organization, horizontal collaboration is often hard to “sell.”

Back to Conway’s Law

Organizational structure shapes communication patterns. Communication patterns shape systems.

If your organization is vertical, your product will be vertical. If your incentives are local, your decisions will be local. If your teams are isolated, your solutions will be fragmented.

You cannot expect horizontal behavior from a vertically optimized structure without friction.

Disconnected collaboration initiatives fail because they try to overlay horizontal tools on top of vertical incentives.

Attempts like a new collaboration platform or using shared workspace technology to incentivize collaboration are examples of this approach.

But the underlying structure remains untouched. People are still measured on local performance. Budgets are still allocated per department. Promotions still reward vertical success.

First question to ask in your company: Who is responsible for your PLM/collaboration infrastructure for non-transactional information?

Most likely, it is in the IT or Engineering silo, rarely on a higher organizational level.

And then we are surprised when collaboration stalls?

The Myth of the Tool

Whenever collaboration becomes a pain, people look for IT tools as a cure.

“We need better platforms.”
“We need integrated systems.”

and now:

“We need AI – the AI agents will do the collaboration for us.”

Tools matter, but they are amplifiers. They amplify existing behavior. They do not create it. While finalizing this article, I saw this post from Dr. Sebastian Wernicke coming in, containing this quote:

Agents are software. Maturity is culture. And culture, inconveniently, doesn’t come with an install package.

If trust is low, a collaboration platform becomes a battlefield. If incentives are misaligned, shared dashboards become weapons. If fear dominates, transparency becomes a threat.

Collaboration is not a software problem. It is a human problem. Which brings us to something that is rarely discussed in boardrooms: the intrinsic motivation of its employees.

The Limbic Brain Is Always There

Beneath the rational layer of strategy and planning sits something older: the limbic system. The part of us that cares about belonging, safety, recognition, autonomy, and purpose.

Collaboration thrives when the limbic brain’s needs are met. It collapses when they are threatened.

• If people feel unsafe, they protect information!
• If they feel undervalued, they withdraw effort!
• If they feel controlled, they resist alignment!

You cannot mandate collaboration if the emotional system of the organization is defensive.

The question is not “How do we force collaboration?”
The question is “How do we create conditions where collaboration feels natural?”

And that requires leaders to connect to the human, not just to the role or an artificial intelligence solution. They should be inspired by this iconic image from Share PLM:

Besides a difficult-to-quantify ROI, there is another reason why collaboration struggles to gain executive traction: it rarely creates immediate success.

It prevents future failure, and we humans in general do not prioritize prevention, thinking of our environmental, financial and potential even health behavior. Where prevention has the lowest cost, most of the time, fixing the damage lies in our nature.

For companies, it is easier to celebrate the hero who fixes a late-stage integration disaster than the quiet team that prevented it months earlier through cross-functional dialogue.

For me, the firefighters are the biggest challenge to successfully implementing a PLM infrastructure. The image to the left comes from a 2014 presentation when discussing potential resistance to a successful PLM implementation.

In vertical systems, firefighting is visible. Prevention is silent and therefore collaboration activities feel like a cost center rather than a strategic lever.

Where to Push, Where to Invest?

If you cannot directly measure collaboration, where should you push? Not in tools alone, slogans or one-off workshops. Invest in shared experiences.

When people meet outside their vertical silos, something subtle shifts. They see faces instead of functions. They understand constraints instead of assuming incompetence. They replace narratives with conversations.

Note: shared experiences are not the same as planned online webmeetings that became popular during and after COVID. They have a rigid regime of collaboration enforcement, back-to-back in many companies, most of the time lacking the typical “coffee machine” experiences.

Also, when looking at events where people share experiences, there is a difference between a traditional vertical PLM/CM/IT/ERP conference where specialists focus on one discipline and on the other side, a human-centric conference, where humans share their experiences in an organization.

The Share PLM Summit in May last year was an eye-opener for me. Starting from the human perspective brought a lot of energy and willingness to discuss various insights – collaboration at its best.

Events, summits, workshops—when done well—create human connection. They remind participants that behind every deliverable sits a person trying to do meaningful work.

The focus on the human perspective is not soft. It is strategic because collaboration is not primarily about information exchange. It is about relationship quality and trust.

The Real Question

The question is not whether collaboration is valuable. The question is whether we are willing to adjust our vertical incentives to make it possible.

Because collaboration is not free, it requires time. It requires emotional energy. It requires psychological safety. It sometimes requires giving up local control for global benefit.

In systems terms, it requires shifting from local optimization to whole-system optimization.

That is uncomfortable.

But if our products are complex, interconnected, and rapidly evolving—as most are today—then vertical thinking alone is no longer sufficient. The world has become horizontal, even if our org charts have not.

And perhaps the real challenge is not how to measure collaboration, but how to design organizations where collaboration is no longer something we need to sell at all. An article from McKinsey might inspire you here for this transition – for me, it did: Toward an integrated technology operating model.

Beyond AI

While everyone talks and writes about AI, I do not believe AI will solve the collaboration issue. For sure, AI collaboration with agents will increase personal and organizational effectiveness, but it never touches our limbic brain, the irreplaceable part that makes us typical humans and unique.

There will always be a need for that, unless we become numb and addicted to the AI environments. There are various studies popping up on how AI “untrains” our brain muscles, reduces patience and deep thinking. Finding a new human balance is crucial.

Conclusion

Triggered by Chad Jackson’s post about MBSE and collaboration, I took the time to deep-dive into the aspects of collaboration in the PLM domain. How do you manage collaboration?

Come and share your experiences at the upcoming Share PLM 2026 summit from 19-20 May in Jerez. The title of my keynote: Are Humans Still Resources? Agentic AI and the Future of Work and PLM.