Designing template to evaluate RM Tools and evaluating 3-5 commercially available RM Tools using the designed template

Project Paper Designing template to evaluate RM Tools and evaluating 3-5 commercially available RM Tools using the designed template Software Requirements Engineering SEN-570 S.M. Saiful Islam ( ID # 0712004) Program – M.Sc. in SE May 17, 2008 1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................. 3 1.1 BACKGROUND INFO ...................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 PROJECT REQUIREMENT ................................................................................................................ 3 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS ..................................................................................................... 3 3. DESIGNING RM TOOL EVALUATION TEMPLATE .............................................................. 3 3.1 REQUIREMENT ENGINEERING CHANLLANGES .............................................................................. 3 3.1.1 Traceability ............................................................................................................................ 4 3.2 EVALUATION TEMPLATE ............................................................................................................... 4 4. TOOL EVALUATION ..................................................................................................................... 5 4.1 DESCRIPTION OF TOOLS ................................................................................................................ 5 4.1.1 Analyst Real Team System ..................................................................................................... 5 4.1.2 Telelogic DOORS Fastrak ................................................................................................... 10 4.1.3 TopTeam TM Analyst ............................................................................................................. 12 4.1.4 IRQA (Integral Requisite Analyzer) ..................................................................................... 14 4.2 TOOLS EVALUATION ................................................................................................................... 20 1. Introduction 1.1 Background Info Requirement Engineering (RE) is a very important phase in the software development life cycle. Field studies reveal that misidentification, misunderstanding and mismanagement of requirements are the most significant sources of customer dissatisfaction with delivered systems as well as are the main causes of system failures. Requirements management involves establishing and maintaining agreement between customer and developer on both technical and non-technical requirements. This agreement forms the basis for estimating, planning, performing, and tracking project activities throughout the project and for maintaining and enhancing developed software. As Requirement Engineering is difficult task, the success of requirement engineering is one of major key factor to be successful in Project delivery itself, many commercial tools have been developed to support this process. These tools have not yet been widely accepted or used and most of them have not yet been matured enough. Therefore, study is required to be conducted to evaluate these tools. 1.2 Project Requirement The are tow objectives of this project which are as follows: • • To design an evalution template to determine benefits of the Requirement Management tool to deal with requirement engineering challanges through tracibility matrix. To apply this template to evaluate 3-5 commercial Requirement Management tool of our choice. 2. Materials and Methods For preparing this document, first of all the software requirement engineering challenges have been studied to come up with a template which would be most suitable to evaluate the tools. To achieve this goal, we have consulted the plenty of internet resources/references. Then we had a group discussion and brainstorming on the gathered information. Finally we have come up with the evaluation template. Then we studied the features and product functions of several commercially available tools randomly which are being used for managing the requirements engineering process. From those we have selected 3 tools which have more features. Then we studied those 3 tools in depth and described our results using the designed template. 3. Designing RM Tool Evaluation Template 3.1 Requirement Engineering Chanllanges The requirements engineering is a difficult task, and a number of its critical problems include • lack of a systematic process, • poor communication between people, • lack of appropriate knowledge and shared understanding, • inappropriate, incomplete or inaccurate documentation, • poor management of people or resources in the context of continuously changing requirements, • psycho-socio-technical problems • problems of scope • • • o the boundary of the system is ill-defined o unnecessary design information may be given problems of understanding o users have incomplete understanding of their needs o users have poor understanding of computer capabilities and limitations o analysts have poor knowledge of problem domain o user and analyst speak different languages o ease of omitting “obvious” information o conflicting views of different users o requirements are often vague and untestable problems of volatility o requirements evolve over time Distributed Requirement Engineering A number of challenging issues were found, including • • • • bridging communication gaps between marketing and development, selecting the right level of process support, basing the release plan on uncertain estimates, and managing the constant flow of requirements. 3.1.1 Traceability Bidirectional traceability is critical for process centric software engineering like CMMI compliance. Tool integration must provide the ability to trace artifacts to and from their respective requirement(s). 3.2 Evaluation Template For evaluting the features supported by the different tools will be represented by the following table. SL.No. Feature Tool 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 Specification Requirement Tracking Tracibility Matrix Bi-directional Tracibility Change Managment Configuration Management/Version Control Import/Export data Collaboration Repository/Document Managment Customization Tool 2 RM Tools Tool 3 Tool 4 7 8 9 10 SL.No. Feature Tool 1 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Easy to use Quick Adoption Interfacing with other tool Hirerchical Data classification Workflow Graphical View Tree views Impact & Gap Analysis Report Generation Project Management Web Enabled User/Role Baseline of Artifacts Reusability Requirement Editor Decision Table Notification System Test case support Tool 2 RM Tools Tool 3 Tool 4 + (plus sign) Means that the tool fully supports this feature 0 (zero) Means that the feature is somehow supported by the tool but in efficient way - (minus sign) Means that the tool doesn’t supports this feature 4. Tool Evaluation 4.1 Description of Tools 4.1.1 Analyst Real Team System ARTS is a powerful enterprise software and systems development application developed by Goda Software. ARTS is a leading-edge lifecycle solution for specification, analysis, and project management. ARTS Features • Specification. ARTS allows specification using traditional specification techniques as well as Use Cases. • Requirements Tracking. Use the combined power of a word processor and a spreadsheet for requirements tracking, reporting, and management. Easily track and manage requirements with Views/Attributes. • Traceability Matrix. A traceability matrix easily displays the complex relationships among requirements and other project artifacts that include Use cases, Design elements, Test cases, Project documents, etc. • Change and Configuration Management. ARTS provides integrated built-in support for change and configuration management of project artifacts, simplifying the development process. • Import/Export. Easily interface with other applications and perform offline data editing and reconciliation using ARTS’s Import and export capabilities. Collaboration. Assign a requirement or other tasks to team members and review their progress. Document Generation. Automatically generate specification documents, and also easily produce powerful reports. Repository (Document Management). A built-in version control system (Repository) stores project documents and files for sharing, collaboration, configuration management and linking the documents to requirements and specifications. • • • ARTS Benefits ARTS provides innumerable benefits for systems or software development projects. • Say good bye to word processors and spread sheets Do not spread your project information in spreadsheets and word processors. ARTS allows automatic identification of requirements, sharing, collaboration and establishing relationships among different elements of system development. • Simplify traceability process With ARTS, the benefits of maintaining traceability information outweigh the cost. ARTS user-friendly visual tools make it very easy to maintain traceability relationships. In addition, ARTS exceptional traceability matrix allows complete impact and gap analysis. • Adopt your own process You may want to adopt a process that is appropriate for a project type and size. ARTS is process independent and technology neutral. ARTS provides a generic set of tools that can be customized to fit any development approach whether it’s Waterfall, Spiral, or Agile. • Control your changes Do your clients keep changing their minds? ARTS takes the worry out of tracking development history and determining the impact of changes to requirements. Manage changes using: • • • • • • Lock/unlock to prevent unauthorized changes Automatic versioning History reporting · Rollback capabilities to access previous versions Inactivate, activate, delete, undelete, and purge functions Baselining of all project artifacts • Easily customize and reuse ARTS provides flexibility to: • • • • Create templates for reusing project artifacts Effortlessly share data across numerous projects Clone copies of your artifacts Use Views & attributes for managing unique project properties • Interface with other tools ARTS is software and platform agnostic, working with any program to make systems development as streamlined and trouble-free as possible: • Import data from existing documents • Edit data offline in a spreadsheet or word processor • Reconcile changes with your database • Interface with other Web tools and software applications • Quickly adopt ARTS Unique and consistent interface for all project artifacts (requirements, use cases, test cases, tasks, etc) provides short or no learning curve. It is also very easy to use, administer and configure. That makes adoption of the tool for your systems development smooth and rapid. It does not cause initial project delays that are normally associated with the complex tools with a high learning curve. • Other ARTS enables effective project management and provides all requirements management benefits. It also allows a thorough analysis, and reports and document generation. Its security features allow user access control and encryption. ARTS features have been shown at a glance in the following tow pages. 4.1.2 Telelogic DOORS Fastrak Telelogic DOORS® Fastrak™ is a quick-to-learn, easy-to-use requirements definition and management solution that helps software development project exceed business needs and rapidly deliver quality applications, meeting short delivery timescales with improved collaborations. Software development projects with short release cycles are under pressure to quickly deliver while also meeting the needs of their customers and producing quality applications. DOORS Fastrak is a collaborative environment that provides an alternative to the chaos of managing requirements in emails and spreadsheets. It is simple to learn and easy to use, and it doesn’t get in the way of development progress. Telelogic DOORS Fastrak Features • Web-based, Collaborative Requirements Definition and Management for Software Development Projects Telelogic DOORS® Fastrak™ provides a Web-based, collaborative requirements definition and management solution that: • Promotes quick and easy adoption by development teams - simple Webbased forms, an 'out-of-the-box' automated workflow, and step-by-step guidance provide a requirements solution that meets the dynamic needs of software development projects. • Engages the customer in the requirements process - Web-based access and role-based views make it easy to involve stakeholders directly in the requirements capture and review process, and to keep them up-to-date on development progress in meeting their requirements. • Delivers high value at low cost - DOORS Fastrak is available either as an installed application or as Software as a Service (SaaS). DOORS Fastrak doesn't need additional client software - just a Web browser. The SaaS option lowers the cost of deployment and administration even further. Starting at just over $1 per user per day, DOORS Fastrak is a simple, low cost, effective way to improve the requirements process of fast-paced software development projects. • Requirements Definition and Management Capabilities Optimized for Software Development Telelogic DOORS® Fastrak™ is a Web-based, collaborative requirements definition and management environment that helps software development projects with short delivery timescales to improve collaboration, meet business needs and deliver quality applications. Telelogic DOORS Fastrak provides: Requirements Capture That's Quick and Easy to Get Started With Simple, Out-Of-The-Box Requirements Process Automatic Audit Trail and Version Control Traceability to Implementation and Test Role-Based Views of Requirements Data and Progress Status Fast, Automated Report Generation The following images show some of the Telelogic screens. 4.1.3 TopTeam TM Analyst TopTeamTM Analyst is a unique tool that provides a "complete solution" for Requirements gathering and management. • • • • State-of-the-art Use Case Authoring and Modeling Rich Requirements Capture and Management Powerful repository for all Requirements artifacts such as Screen Prototypes, Documents, etc. Advanced Traceability creation and visualization • • Integrated Issue Tracking and Change Proposal system Multi-user repository with a full suite of Collaboration Tools TopTeam Analyst is the "only" solution that provides a no-compromise environment for requirements Management and lets you express Requirements in a rich format without holding you back. • Rich Requirements Editor - Write hierarchical Requirements using an advanced WYSIWYG word processor - Bold, Italics, Underline, Tables, Embedded Images, etc. • • • Advanced "Use Case Flow" Word Processor - Automatically keeps Main Flow and Alternate Flow step numbers in synch! Automatic "Use Case Flows" to Diagram conversion - Automatically converts Use Case flow logic into an activity diagram to help you visualize the Use Case logic! Traceability - Create and visualize Traces to system elements using four different interfaces: - Traceability Explorer - Traceability Matrix - Traceability Network Diagram - Traceability Diagram • • • Approval Process Workflow - Specify Requirements approval process workflow with automatic owner assignment Baselines - Create Requirements Baselines at important project milestones Document Management - Store all important documents and files related to the Requirements and Use Cases with the integrated Document Management capability. Documents get baselined along with the Requirements! • Diagramming Tools - Draw any free format diagram with a powerful integrated drawing tool - Context Diagrams - Process Flow Diagrams - State Diagrams • • • • Different Requirement Types - Store Functional Requirements, Non-Functional Requirements, Business Rules and create Traces to other Requirements or System elements Decision Tables - Create Decision tables using "Tables" in the rich text editor Screen Prototypes and Navigation Map Diagrams - Capture Screen Prototypes and Screen Navigation relationships Generate Requirements Document - Generate an RTF (MS Word) Requirements document using a customizable template • • • Complete Change History - Log every change to Requirements with detailed information about what, who, when, why Change Proposal system - Control change to Requirements via the integrated Change Request system Integrated Task Management and Project Planning - For each Requirement create Tasks and Todos for reviews, validations, verification, implementation, etc. and assign them to Team Members. Nothing falls through the cracks anymore! • • • • • Release Management - Target each Requirement to a Release with integrated Release Management capability Threaded Discussions - Collaborate with Team members via Threaded discussions (Recipients can respond from their email in-boxes) Internal Messaging System - Use the messaging system to send messages to Team Members with attached Requirements records Notifications - Subscribe for automatic Notifications of modifications to Requirements Permanent, Secure Requirements Knowledge Repository - Build an invaluable Requirements Knowledge Repository that will not only help you during the Requirements phase but all the way into the maintenance phase of your project. Store all of the above in a versioned, multi-user, multi-time zone repository that can be accessed from anywhere in the world...so everyone is working with the same information. No miscommunication, No misunderstanding, a formula for Project Success! 4.1.4 IRQA (Integral Requisite Analyzer) IRQA is a state-of-the-art Requirements Engineering (RE) tool specifically designed to provide an integral support to the complete Requirements Engineering process. IRQA is the ideal answer for companies looking for a definite solution to define and implement their requirements processes. IRQA outstands as an excellent solution flexible enough to fit in a wide range of companies with basic and complex RM&E needs. User can now have a totally integrated solution, through easy to use, proven functionalities. Powerful RE tool helps teams to build high-quality systems requirements specifications: users can capture and manage requirements, analyze them in relation with the business domain in which they are categorized, and represent the system being built by means of clear and expressive techniques, understandable directly by the end user. Besides, IRQA helps to manage the requirements and to trace them through the subsequent activities and stages in the system development. IRQA also adds graphical functions for supporting the specification organization for large and complex projects, guaranteeing the specification quality. IRQA belongs to a new generation of Requirements Engineering tools: the emphasis is not only on requirements management but also on requirements analysis, project organization and the description of the high-level functions which compose the system being constructed. As a result, IRQA streamlines your software Requirement Management process to increase your efficiency and effectiveness in systems development by using state-of-the-art Requirement Engineering methodologies and techniques. 4.1.4.1 Requirements Management Capture, analyse, specify, model and trace requirements in the same tool. Define your corporate process and organise your requirements throughout your company. IRQA provides an intuitive and easy to use interface to manage requirements and other elements, in order to reduce end users learning curve and implementation time. 4.1.4.2 Block Diagrams Additionally to the usual textual view to manage requirements, users will now be able to standardize your Requirements process in the company with the help of the easy to use graphical models: the “block diagrams”. These interactive blocks diagram will allow you to represent your “navigate” through the specification, focusing on the elements you want to work with, representing and managing visually the traceability between the elements, and sharing the structure between all the users of the system. You will be able to represent your own points of view of your specification. Some examples: Standard requirements Sector specific processes process (i.e. Automotive) …or even a tender evaluation process!! 4.1.4.3 Document View The IRQA 4 “intelligent” document view allows to represent this classification and the requirements they contain in a document like view. This document view is displayed as a MS Word template, in which each chapter and subchapter corresponds to each one of the different types and subtypes of requirements defined in the block diagram. End users will find an intuitive and easy to use “Requirements template” they will only have to fill in. 4.1.4.4 REUSABILITY IRQA 4 provides a state-of-the-art reusability feature that allows sharing requirements among projects in different sharing modes (share, copy&link and copy). This new capabilities allows to define a set of “reusable components” which live in different versions in different projects at the same time. This feature goes far beyond a mere “sharing” of requirements, and specifically supports also Requirements Management & Engineering for product families and variants. 4.1.4.5 Work Flows Requirements lifecycle and many other workflows can now be represented graphically in IRQA attending the different transitions and User Groups (user profiles) existing in the project. Each transition can be provided with specific scripts that will trigger actions within IRQA, like: • • • • Sending a notification email to the users involved when accepting/rejecting a requirement Sending an accepted requirement to a Project Management or SDM tool. Triggering a change in a requirement's attribute …and many other. 4.1.4.6 IRQA Report Manager The reporting capabilities in IRQA 4 provide a wide range of predefined reports in IRQA, exportable to many formats (RTF, HTML, PDF, XLS, CSV, etc.). For the most demanding, the new IRQA Report Manager provides a powerful and flexible report designer where users will be able to create specific reports: • • • • Element reports Traceability reports Dashboards & metrics …and many more! 4.1.4.7 Traceability Between other methods, users can navigate through the relationships defined in the block diagram to establish or validate the traces between the elements, being able to filter rows or columns to display the non-related elements. • Backwards This Traceability Matrix can be combined with the Block Diagram structure to represent the traceability between two indirectly related blocks. • Forward However, forward traceability can also be represented in a tree view to be able to represent a proper change impact analysis. 4.1.4.8 Modeling To complete the Requirements Engineering process, IRQA provides modelling features to represent Business Models, Requirements Modelling, and other models. 4.1.4.9 Test Case Support IRQA support Test Case definition inside the tool, in order to provide an all-in-one interface, where users can perform all the activities related to requirements within the same tool. 4.1.4.10 Baselining Even though IRQA is an easy to use tool, it includes powerful management features that cover the complete RM&E process, including baseline management. Baselines can be created, recovered and compared. 4.1.4.11 IRQA Quality Analyzer The IRQA Quality Analyzer allows you to measure the quality of a particular requirement or a group of them. This will also allow you to early detect low quality requirements, indicating ways and tips for re-writing them. Therefore, the cost of rework will be dramatically reduced. Quality assurance is easy with Requirements Quality Analyzer. Furthermore, quality management information can be sampled at a project level, or at an engineer level, offering tips for process improvement. 4.2 Tools Evaluation Following table shows the evaluation result of the 4 RM Tools against the provided features. SL.No. Feature Analyst Real Team System (ARTS) 1 2 3 4 5 6 Specification Requirement Tracking Tracibility Matrix Bi-directional Tracibility Change Managment Configuration Management/Version Control Import/Export data Collaboration + + + + + + Telelogic DOORS Fastrak 0 0 + + 0 + RM Tools TopTeam TM Analyst Integral Requisite Analyzer (IRQA) + + + + + + + + + + + 0 7 8 + + 0 0 0 0 0 SL.No. Feature Analyst Real Team System (ARTS) 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Repository/Document Managment Customization Easy to use Quick Adoption Interfacing with other tool Hirerchical Data classification Workflow Graphical View Tree views Impact & Gap Analysis Report Generation Project Management Web Enabled User/Role Baseline of Artifacts Reusability Requirement Editor Decision Table Notification System Test case support + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 0 0 0 0 Telelogic DOORS Fastrak + 0 + + 0 0 0 0 + 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 RM Tools TopTeam TM Analyst Integral Requisite Analyzer (IRQA) + 0 0 0 + + + 0 + + 0 0 + + 0 + + + 0 0 + + 0 0 0 + + 0 0 0 0 + 0 + + + (plus sign) Means that the tool fully supports this feature 0 (zero) Means that the feature is somehow supported by the tool but in efficient way - (minus sign) Means that the tool doesn’t supports this feature