EA as an ALM tool

[tibweb]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for some info about how to use EA in a corporate environment; e.g. the Ultimate version. I can see that it can manage requirements quite well even without UML, but to use it as a requirement manager tool there must be some more feature. I'd like to know if EA supports these.

For example

• Create workflows (e.g. requirement shall not be added as approved without review and approval)
• Create user groups per project
• Customize who can do what (for example developer shall not be allowed to change requirement status to approved)
• Automatic versioning of approved requirements

Is there some doc or video tutorial which would explain can I solve these thins or what workaround shall be used? Right now I am using the Professional version and I'd like to see how well we could use EA in a corporate environment as a single tool to cover ALM addition to design.

Thanks in advance,
// Tibor

[Sunshine]

Create workflows (e.g. requirement shall not be added as approved without review and approval)

Haven't used it myself but I understand you might be able to do this via workflow scripts. Have a look in user manual and search for workflow scripts for more details.

Create user groups per project

Yes kind of. You can create groups to restrict who can do what and you can create a group to lock a project. So horizontal and vertical restrictions in one model repository (i.e. central model paradigm). You could create a repository for each project and create a user group for each repository. Not such a good approach if you want to share things across projects.

Customize who can do what (for example developer shall not be allowed to change requirement status to approved)

No but you could put the requirements in a package and apply a lock that just lets a group say "Business Analysts" edit elements in that package.  

Automatic versioning of approved requirements

Not sure but it might be possible via workflow scripts. Hopefully someone else can answer this one.
Hope that helps  

[tibweb]

Thanks for the answer. I've some info based on what you told and most of the things may be solvable. Unfortunately I expected a little bit more ready made solution, but I need to dig further to see what I can do with scripting. Thanks again.

[Sunshine]

Just a further thought. If you are approving requirements in bulk in a package then you can use the update package status feature. Right click on package>advanced>update package status. You get a dialog where you can update all the elements status and version at the same time.
Not sure if that helps, hope it does.

[Dermot]

There is a whitepaper and an example model on working with Workflow scripting available on:
http://community.sparxsystems.com/white-papers/765-workflow-scripting-in-enterprise-architect
This should cover your first three points.