Tag: rm tools

New Version of RM Tools List: March 2019


The new March 2019 version of our list of requirements tools is available. It replaces the previous version from September 2017. The new list contains a total of 78 requirements management (RM) tools.

We observe that the trend of the previous years has continued: The market consolidates further. Heavy-weights from the early days of tool-based requirements management during the first decade of this century retire. A notable example is Caliber from Micro Focus, which hasn’t received any major update for years. Several tools apparently haven’t gotten enough traction and were withdrawn by their vendors. On the other hand, several products have obviously grown stable customer bases and continue to offer advanced features that enable up-to-date requirements management.

From the 78 tools overall, we feature 13 in a list of selected tools. The selection is based on indicators of market share and market presence. It shall also provide a starting point for developing a longlist for tool evaluation and selection.

The main update activities include:

  • All tools have been checked for availability and up-to-date web links to tool and vendor pages
  • Many tool entries have been changed (e.g., name changes, new product bundles), several obviously outdated ones have been deleted
  • 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)
  • The list of selected tools has been reduced from 14 to 13 entries

The list of selected tools is kept small, because our objective is to provide focused support to organizations that want to collect a longlist for tool evaluation and selection. So, we have removed tools that apparently have not received significant maintenance over the past years, that have already well-established successor products, or that appear to have little relevance on the market overall.

This time, we haven’t added any new tools. The reason is that we didn’t come across convincing new market entrants that appear mature enough yet to represent viable alternatives to established players. However, we have spotted a few interesting newcomers and put them onto our watchlist for future updates of the tools list.

Renamed / Rebranded:

Again, several tools were renamed or rebranded. For instance, the company Jama software had just one requirement management product in the past. Now they have an additional data analytics product. Therefore, the previous “Jama” RM product was renamed to “Jama Connect”. All name changes are marked in the list by adding the former name in parentheses, for example: “Storyteller (was Blueprint)”.

Removed:

We have again removed several tools for the following reasons: (a) the tool has been discontinued, (b) it has turned out that the tool does not show sufficient functionality for requirements definition or management, or (c) the tool’s product or vendor websites have not received any substantial updates for more than two years.

  • Accompa
  • Agile Manager
  • AgiloEnvision VIP
  • Focal Point
  • jUCMNav
  • Mingle
  • MooD Platform
  • ProR (Eclipse RMF/ProR)
  • ReMa
  • ReqPOOL Requirements Manager
  • RMTrak
  • Rommana ALM
  • TopTeam Analyst

List of RM Tools Updated: September 2017 Version

The September 2017 version of our list of requirements tools is available. It contains a total of 91 requirements management (RM) tools. The previous version dated back from November 2016.

The new September 2017 list contains many updates that show the requirements tool market is currently in a huge transition and transformation phase. Several vendors have merged in the past year, and there are interesting new developments towards support of agile development.

From the 91 tools overall, we feature 14 in a list of selected tools. The selection is based on indicators of market share and market presence. It shall provide focused support to organizations that want to collect a longlist for tool evaluation and selection.

Overall, the main update activities include:

  • All tools have been checked for availability and up-to-date web links to tool and vendor pages
  • Three tools have been added, many tool entries have been changed (e.g., name changes, new product bundles), several obviously outdated ones have been deleted
  • 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)
  • The list of selected tools has been reduced from 25 to 14 tools.

The list of selected tools has been reduced, because our objective is to provide even more focused support to organizations that want to collect a longlist for tool evaluation and selection. So, we have removed tools that apparently have not received significant maintenance over the past years, that have already well-established successor products, or that appear to have little relevance on the market overall.

Added:

  • Specification Wizard
  • OpenProject
  • ALM Octane

Renamed / Rebranded:

This time, quite many tools have been renamed or rebranded. For instance, the former HPE Software product family belongs now to Micro Focus. During this process, the tool HPE ALM has been renamed into ALM Enterprise. All name changes are marked in the list by adding the former name in parentheses. An example: “HelixRM (was TestTrack RM)”

Removed:

We have again removed several tools for the following reasons: (a) the tool has been discontinued, (b) it has turned out that the tool does not show sufficient functionality for requirements definition or management, or (c) the tool’s product or vendor websites have not received any substantial updates for more than two years.

  • Acclaro DFSS
  • Axure RP
  • Cameo Requirements+
  • IBM Notes
  • IdeaShare
  • Justinmind Prototyper
  • LeapSE
  • LiteRM
  • MockupScreens
  • QPack
  • ReqT
  • SPEQit
  • Telerik Platform
  • Troux Architect

List of RM Tools Updated: November 2016 Version

The November 2016 version of our list of requirements tools is available. It contains a total of 101 requirements management tools. The previous version dated back from February 2016. Several vendors have since released new versions of their tools that we have referenced in the list.

From the 101 tools overall, we feature 25 in a list of selected tools. The selection is based on indicators of market share and market presence.

The extensions and updates to the November 2016 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., product name changes, company acquisitions, new product bundles)
  • Several outdated ones have been deleted
  • 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)

Overall, the following tools have received major updates between February 2016 to November 2016:

  • codeBeamer Requirements Management
  • Enterprise Architect
  • Innovator for Business Analysts
  • Mingle
  • objectiF RM

Important changes occurred with regard to tool vendors: Siemens completed the acquisition of Polarion. It is now a product of the Siemens corporation. In May Micro Focus completed the acquisition of Serena which added some requirements management and agile tools to the Micro Focus portfolio. In September HPE and Micro Focus announced their intention to spin-merge HPE Software.

Concerning the set of tools included in the list, we have performed the following changes during our November 2016 update:

Added:

  • Atlas from Micro Focus
  • Workspace.com from Workspace.com

Renamed / Rebranded:

  • in-STEP RED now objectiF RPM
  • ontime now axosoft
  • Agilian now Visual Paradigm

Removed:

We have again removed several tools that have been discontinued, or whose product or vendor websites have not received any substantial updates for more than two years.

  • AgileZen – no longer available for purchase
  • Avenqo PEP – inactive
  • Axiom – inactive
  • ArcWay Cockpit – inactive
  • Enfocus Requirements Suite – no product information on website
  • GatherSpace – inactive
  • Objectiver – inactive
  • QFDcapture – inactive
  • TeamPulse – no longer available for purchase
  • X-Tie-RT – not available for purchase
  • YAKINDU Requirements – no product information on website

Overview of VersionOne Updates

VersionOne is one of the leading agile tools that we feature in our list of requirements management tools. In an earlier blog post from 2015, we surveyed its then latest developments. These were: Epic Dependency Visualization, Strategic Themes, Epic Timeline Drilldown and Scorecards.

Now we find it’s time for an update. Since spring 2015, VersionOne has delivered several builds, bundled into 3 major release streams named Summer 2015, Fall 2015, and recently in January the Winter 2016 release.

This blog post highlights and summarizes some of the major capabilities that have been added in the timeframe since our previous blog. Note that feature capabilities depend on the VersionOne edition chosen by an organization. For an overview of the four editions Team, Catalyst, Enterprise and Ultimate look up the VersionOne edition overview.

The Summer release 2015 provided enhanced visibility about commit information. The CommitStream TeamRoom panel provides the stream of commit data relevant to all work items for the entire list of repositories that has been configured. The panel can be configured by users to view only the repository commit information they are interested in.

Project management support has been enhanced by introducing budgeting capabilities. Total capacity may be allocated to the entire organization for a certain timeframe and then split into project based budget segments. The Fall release 2016 added capabilities to set budget for strategic themes. These capabilities are available under the topic of portfolio planning.

The Winter release 2016 added a Timesheet feature which allows team members to enter time spent on work items in an environment they are used to. The Timesheet page displays a team members time tracked against items for an entire week.

Reporting capabilities got enhanced in every release. The Summer release 2015 provided additional scorecards, like TeamRoom Scorecard and Iteration Scorecard.

The Winter 2016 release provided a new dashboard at the enterprise level. This Enterprise Dashboard visualizes organizational metrics in the categories: Throughput, Responsiveness, Quality, and Predictability.

DevOps has become a major theme in recent years. As a strategic response to that VersionOne acquired ClearCode Labs to add continuous delivery and automation functionality into its product offering. In the Summer release 2016 DevOps Center was added to the VersionOne product as a first step.

In the Winter release 2016, VersionOne announced that DevOps release automation is now available as a separate product named: Continuum. Continuum helps with automating, orchestrating and visualizing the flow of releases and their associated changes from inception to delivery.

As a consequence, the company VersionOne now offers two products:

  • VersionOne Lifecyle – Agile project and portfolio planning, tracking and reporting
  • VersionOne Continuum – Continuous delivery automation, orchestration and visualization

Kanban support in team rooms is now available. Teams are no longer required to have an open sprint/iteration. TeamRooms can now be configured as “iterationless”, which allows for true Kanban support.

Summary

VersionOne continuously broadens its capabilities in their already rich featured agile tool. From our point of view, it delivers one of the most complete solutions for agile teams. While they have added impressive support for large scale agile development in recent years, they did not neglect to refactor and streamline their core offerings as triggered by requests from their user base.

New Version of Requirements Tools List Available

The new February 2016 version of our list of requirements tools is available. It contains a total of 111 requirements management tools. The previous version dated back from May 2015. Several vendors have since released new versions of their tools that we have referenced in the list.

From the 111 tools overall, we feature 25 in a list of selected tools. The selection is based on indicators of market share and market presence.

The extensions and updates to the February 2016 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., product name changes, company acquisitions, new product bundles)
  • Several outdated ones have been deleted
  • 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)

Overall, we got the impression that tool vendors focused in the second half of the year more on consolidation activities than creating new functionality. Atlassian for example merged two of their flagship products JIRA and JIRA Agile into a single one now called “JIRA Software”.

It will be interesting to see whether vendors will focus in the first half of 2016 on releases with new functionality.

The following tools have received major updates between May 2015 to February 2016, with associated changes of their main version numbers:

  • Rational Doors Next Generation from 5.0.2 to 6.0.1
  • JIRA 6.4 to JIRA Software 7.1.0
  • Kovair ALM Studio from 7.0 to 8.0
  • Mingle from 14.2 to 15.2
  • VersionOne from 15.0.9 to 16.0.2.180

Interesting changes occurred with regard to tool vendors: Polarion announced that it will be acquired by Siemens (look up the Polarion announcement and the Siemens press release). Hewlett-Packard has been restructured and split off into two companies (press release). The enterprise software business is now part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Rally was acquired by CA (press release). Its tool has been renamed into “CA Agile Central”.  IBM Rational Focal Point has been acquired by UNICOM Global (press release).

Concerning the set of tools included in the list, we have performed the following changes during our January and February 2016 updates.

Added:

  • ScrumWorks Pro
  • TraceCloud

These additions have been proposed by readers of the RM tools list who help us keeping the market survey up to date. We want to express our special thanks to Heather Cotton who has pointed us to ScrumWorks Pro, and to Christopher Karr for the link to TraceCloud.

Renamed / Rebranded:

  • HP Agile Manager into Agile Manager
  • Rally into CA Agile Central
  • IBM Rational Focal Point into just Focal Point (now owned by UNICOM Global)
  • HP Quality Center/ALM into HPE ALM/Quality Center
  • JIRA into JIRA Software, as a result of integration with JIRA Agile (formerly an add-on product)

Removed:

  • ALMComplete – product discontinued by vendor
  • JIRA Agile – now part of JIRA Software
  • Poseidon for UML – product appears not to be maintained any more; the last change to the product web site has been in 2010
  • Tormigo – product discontinued by vendor

Included into the list of selected tools:

  • in-STEP RED

Over the next weeks you will find related blog posts on MakingOfSoftware.com. They will contain updates on selected tools and observations from the tool market that we have collected during our ongoing research.