January 1, 2001

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Two Approaches To Managing Requirements

By Tom Farre

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iven the need to trace all software life-cycle processes, tools, and data to the requirements, the question arises: Is it better to purchase a suite of development tools from the same supplier, including requirements management, or build your own suite by integrating a range of best-of-breed tools from third parties? Either approach can work, as long as the tools meet the needs of your company's particular development process.

Perhaps the simplest, if not the most cost-effective, way is to buy the entire suite from a market leader, such as Rational Software Corp., which has a broad range of more than 40 tools. A key element, in Rational Suite Analyst Studio, is the Rational Unified Process for software development. The Unified Process promises a set of best practices for the entire software life cycle, including project management, system definition, software development, content management, and system testing. This comprehensive process may be more than most companies need, but it can provide a basis for creating your own best practices.

That's where Web applications provider Smart Online Inc. started. Working with the Rational Unified Process, Smart Online customized it, writing an HTML interface linking to the parts of Rational's process that met its needs.

Once its process was in place, the company had to decide whether to buy a mix of development tools from different vendors or go with the Rational suite. Smart Online chose Rational, including RequisitePro, for the tight integration between its process and tools, and has been satisfied with the results. "If the requirements-management tool isn't integrated with the process and the other tools," Smart Online CIO Richard Washington says, "you run the risk that requirements, once produced, will not be updated or managed subsequently within the process."

Taking a different tack is Complete Business Solutions Inc. This systems integrator uses the Rational Unified Process integrated with Technology Builders' Caliber-RM for requirements management and Mercury Interactive's TestDirector for automated testing. "The integration within Rational's suite is loose," says Ken Spiegel, director of quality assurance. "We use Rational Rose for modeling, but for other pieces of the life cycle we need more heavy-duty tools. That's why we've gone with a best-of-breed approach."

The key to making best of breed work is ensuring that the integration among tools is strong--a challenge, experts say, because despite vendor claims, some tools are more open than others. Shelly Nakaishi, director of product management at Web developer Cygent Inc., a best-of-breed shop that uses RequisitePro with TestDirector, wishes the integration were better. "Right now, we have to manually map the requirements into Test Director," she says. Another issue is the level of integration. One tool may require data to be imported and exported between tools, while another offers bidirectional live links that are easier to use.

Clearly, the final word on suites vs. best of breed has yet to be spoken. "The lesson of the 1980s and 1990s in the software world is that open beats closed," says Jim Jacobs, research director at IT advisory firm Gartner.

Jacobs says that if Rational stays open, it can capitalize on its broad approach. "If they try to lock people in to their approach as a total solution," he says, "that's more likely to lead to problems."

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Illustration by Campbell Laird

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