Friday, November 13, 2009
Take Advantage of Tool Features
Take Advantage of Tool Features
I know of one organization that exported all the
requirements for a huge five-year project from their specification
documents into a high-end requirements management tool. They defined
countless traceability links among the various types of requirements
stored in the tool. The only
thing they did with all the data, though, was to generate hefty
traceability reports. As it happened, no one in the organization
actually used these reports. The analysts didn't exploit the other
features this powerful tool provided, and the developers still relied
on paper specifications as the definitive source of requirements. The
investment this organization made in acquiring, installing,
configuring, and populating its requirements management tool didn't
yield a meaningful return.
Conversely, I know of projects that stored their
requirements in a tool but didn't take advantage of any capabilities
the tool offered for managing those requirements. One of the strongest
arguments for requirements management tools is having the ability to
define traceability links. The more robust requirements management
products even allow analysts to establish such links to objects stored
in other tools, such as to design elements stored in a modeling tool,
code segments in a version control tool, and tests in a test management
tool. If you don't use the traceability feature, the value of keeping
the requirements in a database is diminished.
The tools also let you define groups and individuals
with different permission levels to identify who can read, create, and
modify the contents of the database. Access controls are an important
consideration for companies that have employees in multiple countries.
These companies must be careful not to inappropriately expose sensitive
technology and data to individuals who do not have the right to see
that information. In contrast, information contained in a written
document is visible to any reader. Take advantage of these tool
capabilities to ensure that all the right people—and only the right
people—can access your project's requirements.
Requirements management tools make managing
requirements easier, but not easy. Before you invest in such a tool,
define your own requirements for it so that your team will select a
product that's a good match for its needs. See Chapter 21 of Software Requirements, Second Edition
for guidance on developing a tool selection process. Don't get caught
in the shelfware trap when you look into requirements management tools.
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