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General Board / Re: All requirements in EA - doable? Advisable?
« on: December 07, 2002, 03:00:13 am »
Just my 2 cents....but I've recently started looking at this - we have a client provided requirements document with approx 800 numbered requirements. Eventually we will track all these in DOORS (another client requirement), but for now I have imported them into EA.
I used the automation feature to run through the client's requirements document (in Word 2000), adding each requirement into the EA repository. The script is written in Word VBA, and once I've ironed out the final bugs I will happily post further details/code here if anyone is interested.
Anyway, I was somewhat concerned that EA would grind to a halt under the weight of all of these new "objects" in the model, but was pleasantly surprised! All 800 went in without a problem, and there is no noticeable slow down in the EA project browser when you open up the requirements package in the model.
I should add that the client's requirements are hierarchically structured, going down to about six levels, and that I have organised them in that way when importing to EA. Each level has a title (which I have represented as a package in the model), with all requirements of that level inside the package. Sub-packages are used to represent level 2, 3 etc. requirements.
I've found that this works really well - the client's requirements document is literally a single Word table, so it's difficult to see the structure. Conversely, the EA import makes it very easy to see and navigate through the structure because of the package hierarchy we've used.
Ultimately we will use this to trace the requirements to other elements in our model (e.g. business processes and use cases - probably using the relationship matrix), but the immediate benefit is that the requirements are that much easier to work with (i.e. browsing, searching etc.).
Martin.
I used the automation feature to run through the client's requirements document (in Word 2000), adding each requirement into the EA repository. The script is written in Word VBA, and once I've ironed out the final bugs I will happily post further details/code here if anyone is interested.
Anyway, I was somewhat concerned that EA would grind to a halt under the weight of all of these new "objects" in the model, but was pleasantly surprised! All 800 went in without a problem, and there is no noticeable slow down in the EA project browser when you open up the requirements package in the model.
I should add that the client's requirements are hierarchically structured, going down to about six levels, and that I have organised them in that way when importing to EA. Each level has a title (which I have represented as a package in the model), with all requirements of that level inside the package. Sub-packages are used to represent level 2, 3 etc. requirements.
I've found that this works really well - the client's requirements document is literally a single Word table, so it's difficult to see the structure. Conversely, the EA import makes it very easy to see and navigate through the structure because of the package hierarchy we've used.
Ultimately we will use this to trace the requirements to other elements in our model (e.g. business processes and use cases - probably using the relationship matrix), but the immediate benefit is that the requirements are that much easier to work with (i.e. browsing, searching etc.).
Martin.