Tag: requirements management

Today, we have published the new and updated May 2015 version of our list of requirements management (RM) tools. The previous version dated back from September 2014. Several vendors have since released new versions of their tools that we have referenced in the list. We have also removed several tools from the list that were obviously not maintained any more. Nine new tools have been added.

The list now includes 113 tools from which we feature 25 in a list of selected tools based on indicators of market share and market presence.

The extensions and updates to the May 2015 release of our RM tools list include:

• All tools have been checked for availability and up-to-date web links to tool and vendor pages
• Some tools have been added, some tool entries have been changed (e.g., name changes, new product bundles), several obviously outdated ones have been deleted
• Due to the increasing popularity of the Jira platform we decided to include RM specific add-ons for Jira.
• We decided to remove tools that focus nearly exclusively on diagramming/mock-up functionality. These tools are classified as RM supporting tools and will be handled separately.
• All tools have been supplied with up-to-date version information (where available) and assigned to the relevant tool categories (e.g., RD, RM, Agile)

Since our previous version of the tool list from September 2014 some important changes happened. We have reported them in a series of blog posts. You might look up the articles for detailed information:

• Blueprint
• Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect
• Jama
• Polarion Requirements
• Seapine TestTrack RM
• VersionOne

Another blog post gives a summary of additional updates to other tools.

In detail, we have performed the following changes to the set of tools included in the list.

Added:

• agosense.requirements
• ReqEdit
• ReqSuite
• Requirements for JIRA
• RMsis
• Rommana ALM
• SOX2 RM
• TREND/Analyst
• Tuleap Enterprise

Renamed / Rebranded:

• Blueprint Requirements Center into Blueprint
• CA Clarity Agile into CA Agile Planning
• ReqMan into RequirementONE Specification App

Removed:

• Lucidchart has been removed, because we have reviewed and revised the tool classification; it is a diagramming and mock-up tool with very little RM-specific functionality
• Reqtify has been removed, because we have reviewed and revised the tool classification; it is a specialized tracing tool lacking most other RM functionality
• Requirements Management Database has been removed, because the product website is not available any more
• rmtoo has been removed, because its open source project appears to be no longer active
• VeroTrace has been removed, because we have reviewed and revised the tool classification; it is a specialized tracing tool lacking most other RM functionality

Included into list of selected tools:

• Cognition Cockpit
• in-STEP BLUE
• Top Team Analyst

Polarion 2015 concludes our survey of version updates of selected requirements management (RM) tools. For a list of the other reviews check out the update announcement for our list of RM tools.

Polarion 2015 was released in March 2015. It is the latest major release, which are usually published once a year.

Live Reporting: Polarion has now adopted widget-based reporting that can be configured interactively. Previously, report definition required some coding. One of the widget types is a Gantt chart that provides a new way to visualize project planning data.

Cross Project Planning: Cross project planning adds a concept of hierarchies of projects. This allows for including items from connected projects into the plan of an overall project.

Signed Status Change: Explicit sign-off of review approval has been provided as a prerequisite for status changes of items to be reviewed.

Field-Based Permissions: Visibility and modification of work items can now be controlled on individual field level.

Polarion® Variants™: Polarion 2015 brings a new add-on product for variant management using feature models. The add-on bundles pure::systems‘s product pure::variants and integrates it into Polarion’s UI. Get more a detailed impression of this functionality from Polarion’s separate feature page.

Additional enhancements affect the management of hyperlinks, LiveDoc document components and layout, license management, performance, and implementation of underlying product concepts. If you want to look up details, check out Polarion’s blog article on the version update: http://blog.polarion.com/introducing-polarion-2015-whats-new-and-noteworthy/

A noteworthy new strategy of Polarion was to introduce the version update using an early access campaign. Important upcoming features were introduced during a series of blog posts and could be commented by users: http://www.polarion.com/2015/planning.php

Polarion 2015 was preceded by release 2014.3 in last December. 2014.3 featured enhancements to working with documents and wikis, new API elements as well as performance improvements: http://blog.polarion.com/polarion-2014-sr3-new-and-noteworthy/

Seapine TestTrack RM

This is the fifth article in our series of blog posts on notable updates from the requirements management (RM) tool market that happened since September 2014. It features updates concerning Testtrack RM from Seapine. Since our last update Seapine delivered several on-premise versions, namely 2014.1.2, 2015, 2015.01.

From a RM perspective these versions focused on stability and housekeeping, no major new functionality.

Noteworthy is the ability to configure interactive task boards based on folders. This allows for progress measuring on sprint, release, or other milestones. Items can be grouped in swimlanes based on folder, user, relationship, or requirement document.

Seapine is one among few RM tool vendors which recognized that taskboards are a powerful tool not only for agile development, but also for traditional development methodology.

Details about those releases can be found at: http://www.seapine.com/testtrack/release-notes

This is the third article in our series of blog posts on notable updates from the requirements management (RM) tool market that happened since September 2014. It features updates concerning Blueprint. Since our last update Blueprint delivered the 6.0 and 6.1 on premise versions.

Release 6.0 focused on requirements reuse capabilities. Reuse of requirements boosts efficiency and quality in the product and project delivery process. Therefore, we see the reuse topic as a major trend in this decade. We already covered this topic in depth in a webinar that focused on reuse.

Some noteworthy new functionalities are:

Improved discussion: Now all users who commented a specific requirement are automatically included when someone posts a discussion. E-Mail users can be anyone (not just Blueprint users).

Requirements reuse: Version 6.0 introduces reuse capabilities for requirements. Requirements can be reused across projects. Tracking of reused requirements is managed by a specific relationship type: “reuse relationship”. Blueprint provides visual information if source and target are no longer in sync. It also provides functionality to reconcile requirements across projects.
The functionality is nicely presented in this Blueprint Video clip.

Collections: With the newly introduced concept of Collections as set of requirements can be easily grouped and managed together as a single unit.

Excel update: Prior to release 6.0 it was possible to import from excel. With the new functionality requirements can be exported from Blueprint to Excel, edited in Excel and re-imported again. Blueprint does not generate a new requirement but updates the existing one. Other RM tools call this functionality “round-trip” support.

Accelerators: Accelerators are downloadable packages that support particular standards, processes, or software development approaches. Accelerators are intended to save time for those configuring Blueprint to suit particular processes used on their projects.
Blueprint plans to deliver accelerators frequently. The first accelerator is an “Agile Accelerator”.

Other features: HP ALM bi-directional integration, Visio 2013 Import/Export, and BPMN 2.0 Support

Detailed information about those releases can be found at blueprints website: 6.0 info, 6.1 info.