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Requirements Management Real Reuse
Requirements reuse provides users with the unique ability to
share a requirement across projects without absorbing unnecessary
duplication of artifacts within a repository. Shared requirements can
track with the ongoing change by the author or remain at a static point
in time as the needs of the project dictate. Further, change to a
shared requirement can be made by anyone and the system handles the
branching and evolution of that requirement appropriately.
The concept of reuse is a familiar notion within the software
development realm, but there are various definitions and use cases
which must be taken into consideration when implementing a solution to
address requirements reuse. Not only do we need to understand what
makes up a requirement but we also need to have a common understanding
of how requirements evolve and how that evolution is stored.
What is a Requirement?
Before diving into
these considerations, let’s first look at the various parts of a requirement:
data, metadata and relationships.
Data
Describes an object, and is
relevant to the object itself. An example of data may be a summary or
description of a requirement.
Metadata
This is data about the data, which
aids in organizing or using the object within a process. It typically describes
the current state of the object, and has the same scope as the data itself. For
instance, metadata may describe the State/Stage within a requirement workflow
(i.e. Approved, Rejected, Satisfied, Tested).
Relationships
This characteristic of a
requirement allows you to model:
- structure (i.e. Consists Of, Includes);
- history (i.e. Revision Of, Derived From);
- conceptual links or traces (i.e. Satisfies);
- and/or ,
references (i.e. Defined By, Decomposes To);
- security (i.e. Authorized By, Enables).
Any given requirement
can have information in each of the data, metadata and relationships categories
and when requirements are reused, any or all of the information can also be reused.
Your requirements management tool
needs to have an architecture and features which will enable it to support the
level of reuse your business dictates as strategic to the organization. Since reuse
can occur at a number of levels, each leveraging the various parts of a
requirement listed above, flexibility is also a key to solving the reuse
challenge.
For
a closer look at requirements reuse and usage scenarios, click here.
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Speakers:
Dr. Martin Sarabura
Solutions Architect
MKS
I've been reading some academic articles recently about requirements reuse
- some have taken to calling it "requirements recycling" - and mostly
they focus on how to do your requirements analysis to promote efficient
reuse. The proposed analysis methods suggest particular data structures
for the requirements but the articles do not discuss structures that
other users of the system may need. When research becomes reality, you
need a lot more views on the data. I will discuss these views in this
article.
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The Reuse Spectrum – From Code to Requirements and Beyond
Speakers:
Chuck Allison
Author, Professor
Software Quality Engineering
Utah Valley University
Dr. Martin Sarabura
Solutions Architect
MKS
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Gaining Efficiencies
with Requirements Reuse
Speakers:
Dr. Martin Sarabura
Solutions Architect
MKS
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Requirements Reuse Article
Author: Tony Baer
Publisher:
Datamonitor ComputerWire (July 20, 2007)
An overview of MKS Integrity 2007’s support
for requirements management and requirements reuse, as well as new support for
ERP change management.
In its latest release of its Integrity ALM tooling, MKS has upgraded
requirement management, its newest piece, to support reusability. It’s
also added new change management capabilities covering ERP, and
tightened up its test management features.
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Speaker: Linda Northrop
Event: Boeing Software Conference
Location: Long Beach, CA, March 2007.
Traditionally, software-intensive systems have been acquired, developed, tested, and maintained as separate products, even if these systems have a significant amount of common functionality and code. Such an approach wastes technical resources, takes longer, and costs more than necessary. A product line approach to software can reduce development cycles, improve return on software investments, improve software system integration, and give an organization more future options. Building a new product or system becomes more a matter of assembly or generation than creation, of integration rather than programming. Software product lines present at long last a reuse strategy with real economic benefit. Making the move to product lines, however, is a business and technical decision and requires considerable changes in the way organizations practice software engineering, technical management, and organizational management. This presentation explores the basic concepts of software product lines, share experience reports from companies employing the paradigm, and explore the software engineering and management practices necessary to develop a successful software product line.
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MKS Integrity for Requirements Management is the ONLY solution built
into a complete application lifecycle management platform. No
traditional, first generation requirements management vendor today can
match MKS’s capabilities for requirements management, and none of these
generation one vendors have the core product architecture to do so in
the near future. MKS Integrity enables traceability, change and
configuration management of requirements through every stage of the
software development process from needs analysis to delivery, and it is
distinctive in its support for requirements reuse. MKS Integrity
seamlessly connects business analysts to development via a single
platform and process, to ensure that the final application meets the
business need.
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The Real
Reuse section of RM Zone provides community members with information on reusing
software requirements. Requirements reuse
is the unique ability to share a software requirement across projects without
absorbing unnecessary duplication of artifacts within a repository. Visitors to
this section will find articles, research, tools, events and other information
that they can leverage to implement and improve their requirements reuse
practices, and thus increase the agility of their software organization.
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| Podcasts |
Solving the Requirements Challenge
Requirements are a hot topic in IT and software organizations today. Recently Megan O’Meara had a chance to interview Peter Sterpe, a senior annalist at Forrester research, to find out if tools are the only answer, or if there is more to the problem. Peter points out a distinction between requirements management and requirements definition as well as discussing what is behind the rise in the adoption by enterprises of requirements management.
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