The early phase of each development process is characterised by severe decisions under great uncertainty. To facilitate these decisions, it is crucial to know the (external) influences on the product and the corresponding product development, to offer as large a base of information as possible. There is a broad variety of factors influencing the product and the associated development, which may include legislative changes or mutating customer behaviour. To help the developers make the right decisions it is essential to provide a vast number of information to support this task.The results presented in this paper provide the basis for the approach of including the prognosis of external influencing factors into the planning procedure of products or product-service systems. At first, a literature review was conducted to identify relevant external influencing factors for product and product development. In the following within the framework of the cooperation with an industry partner an approach was elaborated and evaluated.It supports selecting the most important factors for the product or the company, determining the interrelations between them and for weighting their specific impact.     «

The early phase of each development process is characterised by severe decisions under great uncertainty. To facilitate these decisions, it is crucial to know the (external) influences on the product and the corresponding product development, to offer as large a base of information as possible. There is a broad variety of factors influencing the product and the associated development, which may include legislative changes or mutating customer behaviour. To help the developers make the right deci...     »