Requirement Management....

[chris_]

Hi everybody,

I need some help concerning requirements... I want to use EA as a Requirement Management Tool. I have define my requirements in an activity diagram and I have moved them "External"...

1 - Is it the standard way? or should we better write the requirements, by adding a requirement element and then link it to an element of the diagram...
2 - By requirements which have been moved "external", why do they not appear in the export?
3 - By defining the requirement through an element of the diagram, the requirement field contains in fact the short description and the field below contains the whole requirement.
Is that right?

Thx

Chris_

[Thomas_Arnbjerg]

I use EA to manage requirements - also as external. This association corresponds to a 'realizes' association between the element and the requirement element. I think the benefit of external requirements is the ability to visualize dependencies and establish traceability between requirements and test cases. Associate an auto-counter for requirement elements to get a 'unique' number (in quotes since there is no guard  against manual overrides). This number becomes the alias of the element (can be displayed in diagrams). Use document templates if you need to generate paper. BTW: I also use the requirement elements to visualize the change history as a diagram instead of as text.

[Aaron B]

You might be interested in watching the following talkthrough demo video on requirements management which was recently added to our website:
http://www.sparxsystems.com/resources/demos/requirements-management/requirements-modeling.htm

[Thelonius]

You might be interested in watching the following talkthrough demo video on requirements management which was recently added to our website:
http://www.sparxsystems.com/resources/demos/requirements-management/requirements-modeling.htm

Aaron - the video is excellent - thanks - will Sparx be providing more video w voice over in future for other aspects of EA functionality?

Jon

[Aaron B]

Yes.  We do hope to produce more demos like this in the future.  Stay tuned.

[chris_]

Thanks to everybody  

Aaron - the video is very helpful, it really gives an overview on the requirement functionality. Will Sparx also provide more detailed tutorial on this?

Thomas - I have the same opinion for diagrams, nothing better for visualization    Concerning the aliases, what is the difference between alias and requirement number? Does the use of aliases really provide something more?  :-?

I also notice that by externalization of a requirement from a diagram, the aliases/requirement number is not automatically generated (like the normal way, i.e. "add element/requirement")? Is it a configuration issue?

Thx

Chris_

[Thomas_Arnbjerg]

The video illustrates how the requirements can automatically have a prefix and number associated with them. You can do the same for alias, which is a different attribute of all model elements. The effect is thus the same but the requirement number is kept for it self and thus less likely to be tampered with. In the video they mention that risk.

If you use alias you should change the diagram settings to show both name and alias (options->diagram->behaviour->alias usage->alias and name checked).

[chris_]

Ok  
Thx for the info, I will configure it