Requirements Models

Requirement Engineering is one of the most important disciplines in the system lifecycle. When done well, it will set the foundation for a successful project or program of work, ultimately ensuring that engineering teams deliver great value to the users and other stakeholders. Enterprise Architect is a sophisticated and intuitive platform for developing and managing Requirements gleaned from modeling stakeholder statements, business cases, business drivers, and capabilities to define detailed Functional and Non-functional Requirements. The engineer can prioritize, trace, and track requirements and record changes, baseline, version, and record audits of changes. Engineers, managers, consultants, and customers can work together in a collaborative platform with role-based Security, Discussions, a team Library, Model Mail, and a range of other tools to encourage best practice and productivity, either directly on the local system or through Pro Cloud Services.

Requirements Diagram

A systems engineer uses a requirements diagram to create and view Requirements and their relationships to other elements, including other Requirements. You can specify requirements at any level, from strategic enterprise or business requirements through stakeholder requirements down to low-level engineering and even software and transition requirements. Requirements properties, including their id and text, can be displayed or suppressed on a diagram; the choice depends on the diagram's purpose and its intended audience.

Requirements Discipline

Requirement development includes all the activities and tasks associated with discovering, evaluating, recording, documenting, and validating the requirements for an engineering project or program of work. Requirements are discovered, analyzed, specified, and verified, and Enterprise Architect has a wide range of tools and features to assist the requirement engineer as they develop requirements. The Specification Manager is the centerpiece for requirement development, allowing the Analyst to enter, view, and manage requirements in textual form in a spreadsheet or document-like view.

Requirements Tools

The Specification Manager is an easy-to-use tool providing a spreadsheet or word processor view that you can use to manage requirements or any other model element. It is particularly beneficial when working with requirements that have descriptive text to describe the requirement in detail. An engineer can create new requirements with names and detailed descriptions, and properties such as Status and Priority can be added or changed from drop-down lists. You can conveniently view and manage existing requirements using other diagrams and windows - and changing them in the Specification Manager will change them in all other places in the repository.

The Specification Manager is the perfect tool for those analysts who are more comfortable working with text rather than diagrams and who are accustomed to working in a Word Processor or Spreadsheet. It has the added advantage that the Requirements are part of a model, and an engineer can trace them to other elements, including Business Drivers, Stakeholders, and Blocks. This image shows that you can specify and manage the Requirement status and other element properties using drop-down lists.

An engineer can open diagrams and Packages containing requirements in many views, including the Specification Manager.

DOORS Integration

The designers of Enterprise Architect understand that customers might have existing or incumbent requirement management tools that they use as part of a corporate or engineering policy. To allow the full scope of modeling and traceability, Enterprise Architect integrates with both the legacy DOORS application and the newer DOORS Next Generation tool, allowing you to view the DOORS requirements inside the application and trace to both up-process and down-process elements these requirements.

DOORS MDG Link (Legacy method)

In the MDG Link for DOORS, you can create a link between Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and an existing IBM® Rational® DOORS® module, which enables you to exchange requirements data between DOORS and Enterprise Architect. You can also redirect the link to a different module. You can import data from DOORS to Enterprise Architect and export data from Enterprise Architect to DOORS through this link. You can both import requirements from DOORS or export requirements located in the Enterprise Architect repository to DOORS.

DOORS NG Integration

Using the Pro Cloud Server Jazz Plug-in integration you can manage various Rational tools, including the DOORS Next Generation Requirement Management tool. This allows you to push and pull requirements from any configured DOORs project. The tools include:

• IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation's Requirement management tool
• Rational Rhapsody Design Management (DM)
• Rational Team Concert Change and Configuration Management (CCM)
• Rational Quality Manager (QM)