Requirements Management Tool Resources
JB | Sep 04, 2008 | 14 Comments | Print |
Welcome to Practical Analyst, a site specializing in practical insight for business analysts and project professionals. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for stopping by!
My company has been looking at requirements management solutions, which has provided me with the unique opportunity to play the “user” role for a change, and to do a little research into the attributes that make requirements management successful. Anyway, what I’d like to do with this post is to share a few items I’ve found on the Web as well as some of my own thoughts on what might be of use to others who might be looking for a requirements management solution.
- [Updated: Thanks to Derek's comment for providing an updated link to the Incose information] Here is the updated link for the INCOSE Requirement Management Tools Survey.
- (Older, but still available and potentially useful) INCOSE Requirements Management Tools Survey – This survey, provided in table form, compares over 40 different requirements management systems based on how well they conform to over 75 common requirements. Information ranges from as early as 2004 to the summer of 2008, so you’ll have to bear in mind that some of the information may not be the latest and greatest. The INCOSE survey at least gives you a start and can save you quite a bit of preliminary information gathering work regarding the various tools available in the market, and some initial requirements. If you’re interested, here is a text version of the survey requirements.
- Forbes.com also provides a directory of requirements management tools that can be filtered by popular features. I’d refer to the INCOSE survey first, but there is some good information here as well.
- Seilevel’s Requirements Management Tool Selection – I’ve always enjoyed the Seilevel blog and message board as a resource for business analysis insight. In post linked above, Joy shares Seilevel’s process in selecting a requirements management tool to recommend to their clients. She also provides a useful comparison between three “heavy hitters” in the requirements management space – Telelogic (now IBM) Doors, Rational Requisite Pro, and Borland Caliber Analyst. I won’t steal their thunder and share their final recommendation here, but advise you to go have a read.
- Ralph Young has an interesting document on his site that outlines his process and requirements for selecting a requirements management tool. His document compares a few of the leading tools, but the document is from 2002, so it is more useful as a template to use to pattern a selection process than as a resource to decide between the listed products.
- In a separate post from the one mentioned above, Seilevel also shares their requirements for deciding on a 3rd party solution provider and describes how this process is different from the requirements process for home-grown software. My company has been following a very similar process in choosing our management tool.
I will probably have more to share as we continue our selection process, but hopefully these will make a good start. If you know of any additional, useful resources for evaluating requirements management tools, I’ll be grateful if you’d share them in the comments below.
Filed Under: Requirements
You should check out Contour in your evaluation: http://www.jamasoftware.com/contour.htm
There is a site named Jiludwig that also has a comprehensive list of RM tools http://www.jiludwig.com/Requirements_Management_T... I would also suggest checking out http://www.artifactsoftware.com
Thanks, guys. I'll check those out.
There is a site named Jiludwig that also has a comprehensive list of RM tools http://www.jiludwig.com/Requirements_Management_T... I would also suggest checking out http://www.artifactsoftware.com
http://www.RequirementOne.com offer a completely free hosted management requirement platform. The business model is like Facebook, i.e. the more users the better. The solution is comprehensive and is used by very large as well as small teams and organisations.
Thanks for the link, Lars. I just signed up, and will look at the tool a bit more later. It is certainly an intriguing idea!
Hi JB. Looking forward to hear what you think. The RequirementOne platform is used by very large software companies as well as small teams and has a broad range of functions.
I have work with several tools over the last couple of years. What i found was the Incose site is out of date and the the reviews are surveys filled in by the vendors. It also does not take in some of the newer tools that are showing up. We just went through a trade study to pick a new tool because the tool that we had RTM was out of date and the new version from serena was no better.
We sat down and did a specification for a new tool and used that to do the evaluation. We had a couple of hard requirements; 1 it had to run on an industry standard database. This requirement came from lessons learned. 2. It had to be completely Web Based, again lessons learned. 3 it had to provide formated text RTF and the with that graphics and tables.
What we ended up with was a tool Called PACE from Viewset INC. We also work more with hardware requirements so that factored in also.
With respect to the INCOSE site, they have updated their info and moved it to a new page:
http://www.incose.org/ProductsPubs/products/rmsur...
-Derek
Thanks for the updated information, Derek.
I know Seapine Software recently released TestTrack RM that fits into their product line of ALM software. http://www.seapine.com/ttrm.html
Cognition Cockpit might be of interest to many. It combines VOC, risk, test, and requirements management. It's big in medical and DOD. http://www.cognition.us
I am interested to hear what you thought of the free requirement management solution mentioned above from http://www.requirementone.com ?
This site has some helpful info on picking out a requirements tool and a vendor. http://requirements.seilevel.com/blog/