Distinguish between User and System Requirements

[Dermot]

If want to drop an email to Sparx support we can send you an updated whitepaper on Requirements Management.
Otherwise see:
http://www.sparxsystems.com/downloads/whitepapers/Requirements_Management_in_Enterprise_Architect.pdf

[vodzurk]

Since you will anyway get flooded with new information, here's a not so cheap advice in short time: hire a requirements specialist. There are quite a lot out there . and unfortunately also not too few who 'think' they are specialist but only good salespersons on their own behalf. If you happen to find a good consultant you will save a lot of money in the long term. If you're unlucky ... well, I guess you know.

q.

Hi, good advice without a doubt, but as you say, expensive.  Also embarrassing, as after 4 years of formal training for this position (mostly classroom), and finally competing for the job and getting it Q4-2015 (within same company I was developer/analyst at)... to say that I need to hire someone to do my own job might shorten my career here .

All said, I think my employers have been very happy with my work so far.  EA investigations are a background task I'm chipping away at.  No projects have used it thus far (other than for a few diagrams).  My projects seem to range from (1) small piddly things involving a few stakeholders and turnaround of less than a couple of months, to (2) pretty small time-wise and stakeholder-wise but reasonably large impact on our business, to (3) global strategic projects involving project teams and 1000's of end-users.  It's those from (1) that I'm trying to extend into more robust methods, as impact and timescales are small.  For (2) and (3), I fall back to our company standard that I'm confident with and meets all my employer expectations (in my view, it is pretty well developed, though paper-based... however it can be picked up by non-Requirements Specialists which is a bonus in many ways).  When I'm 100% up to speed, I aiming to take more advantage of EA across (2) and (3).

[vodzurk]

If want to drop an email to Sparx support we can send you an updated whitepaper on Requirements Management.
Otherwise see:
http://www.sparxsystems.com/downloads/whitepapers/Requirements_Management_in_Enterprise_Architect.pdf

Hi Dermot, greatly appreciated... is the updated whitepaper the same as in: Registered > Resources > White Papers > Requirements Management in Enterprise Architect ?

I've submitted a support request as advised.  I'm borderline information-overload at the moment.  I've at least 2000 pages of information I need to read (stacked up next to me... Volere, various RE books, 30+ research papers) over the next few weeks (doing an MSc in my "spare" time with dissertation in Requirements Engineering phase, which is going great alongside planning my wedding, argh!  I expect I'll have no hair by September).

The PDF you linked above, I think was the first thing I printed (and read, honest!) after purchasing EA... I think maybe after my first attempt to read it a few months ago, followed by lots of dabbling, maybe its time to re-read.

[qwerty]

I know what you're talking of. Luckily, I have left this behind me and can say "I survived it". Good luck with all your projects. And, as one of my former companions said: an elephant can not be swallowed at once. Only in small slices...

q.

[vodzurk]

I know what you're talking of. Luckily, I have left this behind me and can say "I survived it". Good luck with all your projects. And, as one of my former companions said: an elephant can not be swallowed at once. Only in small slices...

q.

Exactly this .  I'll blunder about a bit with small stuff that nobody will lose any sleep over... and hopefully in a year or so I'll be fully up to speed with it.

Seems crazy that there's so much taught material on so many elements of RE... yet so very little of actual tool usage comes into the classroom.  I see a gap in the market!  .

[qwerty]

Just look at DOORS' UI. They stopped developing that mid 90s (I guess) and it's still (one of) the market leader(s). Requirements are still underestimated by people who should know better. Lots of projects fail or stumble seriously because of the wrong requirements handling. (Should I mention the Berlin airport here?)

q.

[vodzurk]

Just look at DOORS' UI. They stopped developing that mid 90s (I guess) and it's still (one of) the market leader(s). Requirements are still underestimated by people who should know better. Lots of projects fail or stumble seriously because of the wrong requirements handling. (Should I mention the Berlin airport here?)

q.

Ooof... I didn't realise that about DOORS... I've only seen a few screenshots of it, but since seeing the price it weighs in at, have stayed clear.  TBH, I think it's probably more industry-targeted to large engineering work packages and their design changes (basically; set up a process to feed it and then feed it for years, the old "if it works, don't fix it" story)... so will probably end up staying clear of it.  I can't believe it's barely updated.  You'd think they'd at least feed the requirements into it and get them moving forward... unless DOORS killed DOORS?

I don't know the story behind Berlin Airport... a quick glance at Wikipedia though has it looking more like a PM failure (timescales; though likely Reqs related) and corruption.  Know any *short* reports on linking the failings to requirements?  As for global corruption, lets start an EA project to fix that .

[qwerty]

The short story behind the airport is this.
Politicians: Build an airport with all bling-bling.
Companies: Here it is with your requirements. Takes €1.7 Billion.
P.: Go on. Start building.
C.: Start to build.
P. (after a while): Oh. This is much too expensive. Cancel Req. A, B, C...
 C.: Cutting down.
This happens several times. In the end a lot of needed requirements were cut also and they needed to be re-introduced. Things don't fit everywhere. Current (planned) costs: 5.3 Billion - and rising.

There are for sure many reasons why this has failed. But the starting point was juggling with requirements the wrong way. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport

q.

[jfzouain]

Hi

Have been following the thread and I know what you are going through, I specially like to manually number my requirements.
Have used RaQuest and DOORS and both are good tools, but you don't need them to start with; EA manages requirements very good.
Is good to hire a consultant like Qwerty just posted, but if you don't want to spend a lot just buy my book and it shows you how to do all you are asking here.

UML - ERP Workshop, writing a Business Requirement Document for the Inventory Control.
This can be applied to any system I just used my own system which has a one module of of 9 named "Inventory Control"
Happy reading.
.
You can find it here:

https://leanpub.com/uml-erpworkshop