White Papers
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Getting Requirements Right in the Analysis Phase
Getting requirements right in the analysis phase is a critical success factor for delivering working software that answers the business need, is the focus of this collaborative white paper between Microsoft Visual Studio and Compuware Optimal Trace. In the early stages of system analysis high-level goals have been specified and each has been expanded into a series of Structured Requirements. A critical success factor for delivering business-facing applications will always be the accuracy and completeness with which the business requirements are captured and traced to the associated detail throughout the project life cycle. Read about Optimal Trace's integration with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) enabling VSTS users to leverage Optimal Trace advantages resulting in accurate and complete business and system requirements, while allowing the IT team to trace design and QA activities in VSTS back to the business requirements/goals.
Capturing Project Development Success -- Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) & Optimal Trace
How development organizations are building better projects faster using efficient, well-integrated requirements capture and management solutions is the focus of this collaborative paper between Microsoft Visual Studio and Compuware Optimal Trace. With the ever increasing market pressures to deliver what the business expects within short timelines, IT departments and software development organizations are putting a focus on the front end of the application development lifecycle starting with effective requirements gathering and documentation. Optimal Trace offers a unique solution to capturing accurate business requirements and mapping the requirements directly to the business goals. From there Optimal Trace provides full integration with development tools such as Visual Studio Team System assuring communication of the business requirements all the way through the application life cycle.
Optimal Trace: The Microsoft Word of Functional Requirements
While many requirements tools on the market focus on accessibility and convenience features, they fail to fully address the main issue that made use case analysis so successful: managing functional requirements and tracing them through the project development lifecycle. This RQNG white paper explains the benefits of the scenario-centric framework as implemented in Optimal Trace for system development projects. This paper sponsored by RQNG also focuses on the functionality that makes Optimal Trace indispensable for both requirements beginners and experts alike. Lastly it gives practical insights into how to make requirements better. The author, Vitalie Temnenco, is based in Toronto, Canada and has worked in various architectural capacities (software, applications, enterprise) for more than seven years. Before his career as an architect, he worked as a consultant, project manager, programmer and analyst for more than twelve years.
Requirements definition and management- The cornerstone of quality software
How much of your IT investment is being wasted because QA is being involved too late in the development cycle? Building a strong link between requirements definition, management and the quality process is a critical success factor in achieving successful project delivery. This Compuware white paper highlights useful tactics in adopting a Requirments-Driven approach to quality. It will provide tips and tricks to support early and effective involvement of QA in the life cycle. The ability of Compuware Optimal Trace and Compuware QACenters solutions to resolve these issues is also discussed.
Driving Effective Requirements Through Quality Coordination for Adaptive IT/Business Collaboration
Melinda-Carol Ballou discusses the need for closer collaboration in organizations across requirements and testing intiatives to help create better-quality, more relevant applications fast. IDC's research indicates that 70-80 percent of IT project failures result directly from poor requirements gathering, management and analysis. Ballou summarizes that for success it is vital that business and IT staff transition to coordinated practices as they adopt better-integrated testing and requirement management technologies. Aligning business with IT is crucial to success in highly competitive, complex global markets. This paper establishes the imperative for combined solutions to Requirements-driven Testing such as Compuware's integration of Optimal Trace with QACenter. Read in the attached case study how LogicaCMG, a major international IT services provider has focused on begining test applications at the requirements phase to improve the application development process.
The New Business Analyst: A Strategic Role in the Enterprise, Nov. 2006
Compuware gets to the heart of the Business Analyst – the "lynch pin of the requirements definition process", according to Forrester analyst Carey Schwaber. This Compuware study undertaken in association with Evans Data and the Requirements Networking Group, checks out the new breed of BA that is expected to move with ease between the worlds of business and technology. The survey examines both the strategic and the day-to-day contributions of BAs, confirming that they are seasoned professionals who juggle multiple tasks linking IT projects to business success and are critically important to making sure that IT matters to the business. It also shows the relative immunity to outsourcing that the BA enjoys, meaning higher job security, which is particularly important during a period of high outsourcing.
The Root of the Problem: Poor Requirements - A strategic review by Forrester
Carey Schwaber, Forrester Analyst, presents three strategies for addressing the requirements challenge. Based on brand new research on best practices in leading IT organizations, Carey concludes that it doesn’t matter how well requirements are managed, if they aren’t the right requirements in the first place. The real opportunity for improvement lies in requirements definition according to Carey and she outlines some tactics for IT Managers to adopt to tackling this thorny issue. Carey discusses this report and the main aspects of her findings on the Computerworld webcast "get IT right the first time" available from our events page.
Best Practices for Structured Requirements
This paper introduces the concept of 'Structured Requirements' - A best practice approach to Incremental scoping, development and delivery of applications.
The Journey from Requirements Capture to Right-First-Time Software Delivery
Despite improvements in many parts of the life cycle, today’s quality assurance and test professionals still grapple with some key challenges such as receiving inconsistent, fuzzy or too "high-level" requirements; not being able to trace tests back to requirements and vice versa, backfilling test cases late-cycle, only after receiving the system in part or in whole, with the associated risks, lack of traceability from requirements to test and vice versa; etc. These challenges are compounded by having to achieve an increasingly difficult balance between system complexity, cost control, off-shore development and time. This white paper discusses how to manage a testing process throughout the life cycle to deliver tested, performing software that fulfills the original business need cost effectively.
Show and Tell
This paper discusses how Requirements Definition (RD) and Requirements Management (RM) are at the center of successful project fulfillment. Ineffective or failed project delivery is still a common theme and is directly related to misunderstood scope and lack of agreement and understanding between the business and application delivery. The challenge is to effectively bridge the communications gap between business and technical users.
Transitioning to a Use-Case-Driven Approach
You may have read some of the articles about use cases and the merits of the approach appear compelling but you are still not quite sure as to where to go from here. Optimal Trace's Professional Services arm has helped numerous organizations to adopt a use-case-driven approach to project development, resulting in low-risk software initiatives and dramatically reduced project risk. This paper outlines practical steps that can help successfully transition your organization to a use-case-based approach.
Optimal Trace Architecture
This paper discusses the technical architecture of the Optimal Trace tool suite and the underlying layers and architectural principles.
Scalability and Performance
Optimal Trace Enterprise has been built upon a highly scalable architectural base. This is a technical paper outlining how Optimal Trace handles scalability and performance.
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