Requirements and Product Management

Multirepository ALM platforms provide common services to discrete practitioner tools, obviating the need for each practitioner tool to include redundant and inconsistent ALM functionality. The only vendor with a requirements management solution of this sort is Kovair. Kovair Global Lifecycle/Enterprise Edition functions as an orchestration engine for processes spanning multiple development life-cycle tools, including Kovair's own requirements management solution.
Carey Schwaber and Peter Sterpe of Forrester Research

Product Features

100% Web-based

Kovair Global Lifecycle/RM was designed from the ground up as a web-based application optimized for project work that is distributed between buildings on your campus, or at sites around the world. All functionality, including administrative and configuration processes, are supported over the web. Kovair enables

• Telecommuters work more effectively
• Better management and control of offshore projects
• Better collaboration with different internal functional groups
• Better collaboration with service partners

Requirements Capture

In Kovair Global Lifecycle, you can capture Requirements in any of the following ways:

• Using Rich Text Editor in Kovair, you can open a Microsoft Word document or copy-paste a portion of formatted text to the Rich Text Editor.
• Submitting from your Corporate Website or Portal
• Sending them by Email
• Importing from Microsoft Word Document
• Importing from Microsoft Excel spreadsheet
• Importing form a CSV file with configurable format
• Using any third party Requirement Management and other tools to define Requirements; and in real-time synchronizing them with Kovair through Kovair's Omnibus Integration Bus

Requirements Management

Kovair supports Requirements Management of many flavors - standard as well as proprietary methodologies or processes. All the capabilities necessary to perform Requirements Management effectively and effortlessly are built-in in Kovair that are accessible through a highly user-friendly interface. These include:

• Many-to-many single and bi-directional Traceability Relations with proactive and reactive Impact Analysis
• Requirements Reuse
• Requirements Change Management
• Requirements Baselining
• Requirements Ranking
• Release Roadmap and Decision Support
• Requirements Process Automation
Integrations with other tools Requirements and Development Methodology Requirements and Test Management Requirements Reporting in multiple formats

Requirements Traceability

Kovair Requirements Management has the most comprehensive Traceability Relation features. Kovair allows multiple types of relations including custom ones between Requirements. Create logical links (depending, affecting, bi-directional) between requirements and view in a number of visualizing tools Kovair offers. These include Traceability hierarchy report, Traceability Matrix and Traceability Relation Network diagram. Kovair allows both proactive and reactive impact analysis. Impact of changes is forwarded to stakeholders automatically to ensure synchronization and address corrective actions so that problems are addressed early to minimize cost of changes at the end of the lifecycle.

Integrated Requirements Management in Kovair's Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution extends the concept of Traceability to multiple dimensions. ALM solution is pre-configured with relationship between Requirements and Test Cases, Issues, Risks, Projects and Releases. A multi-entity Traceability relationship makes the sum of parts bigger than the parts themselves.

Requirements Reuse

In any organization well written and implemented Requirements have a great value. By reusing these Requirements assets, projects can cut down overall development time and enhance quality. Kovair has several features to support Requirements reuse by 'Mass Conditional Cloning', 'Shared Requirements' and 'Versioning with Branching and Merging'.

Requirements Change Management

Requirement changes are the reality of any project. They are also the source of unbridled cost and time overruns. A well defined and consistent Change Management process is the only way the Requirement changes can be reviewed, approved, implemented and tested within acceptable costs and timelines. Kovair's process engine the Omniprocess allows a design, implementation and automation of a Change Management process closely related to the automated Requirements Management process.

Requirements Ranking

With thousands of Requirements gathered from various sources any Product Management or Analyst group faces the daunting task of determining the relative importance of these Requirements for a set of organizational goals. Kovair helps in gathering ratings for each Requirement from multiple users against a set of business goals. This rating process can be embedded within a larger Requirements Management process and automated using Kovair's Omniprocess engine. After the ratings are done, Kovair can automatically determine the weighted score for each Requirement and that can be used for Requirements for proper product management and development decisions.

Requirements Process Automation

Kovair Global Lifecycle/RM through the capabilities of its built in Omniprocess Workflow engine (as described elsewhere on this website) facilitates complete automation of the Requirements Management workflow the way it happens in your organization by facilitating the creation of a Step-based or more complex Task-based process. Most of the Requirements Management tools in the market today do not come with built in process workflow engine like Kovair does. This capability helps simplify task management across time zones by replacing manual task assignment with automatic handoff - such as during the review of Requirements before including them in a product roadmap or when the developer in Bangalore is finished coding, the designated tester in Dublin is automatically notified and assigned the next step of ensuring test case creation and testing. This process configurability and automation supports any methodology or process (RUP, Agile, Scrum, CMMI). If your development is distributed globally this process automation eliminates many emails, phone calls and coordination of tasks meetings across different time zones and enhances productivity considerably. The analogy is similar to a fully automated "lights out" manufacturing facility.

Requirements and Development Methodology

Whether yWhether you are following traditional waterfall, phase-gate, RUP or more Agile methodologies like Xtreme Programming or SCRUM, Kovair's Requirements Management can implement any of those methodologies without any compromise. Even if you wish to call your Requirements "Users Stories"(XP) or "Backlogs" (SCRUM) you can configure Kovair to use those exact names. But, like most of the organizations if you follow a proprietary methodology that is loosely related to some well known one, Kovair helps you implement it without any limitations.

Requirements Reporting

Kovair Global Lifecycle produces reports and Requirements documents of various kinds. They include:

• cMRD - MarMRD - marketing Requirements Document, a fully formatted Word document
• SRS - System Requirements Specifications, a fully formatted Word document
• Product Roadmap Document, a fully formatted Word document
• Test Compliance Report, a fully formatted Word document
• Trend Charts
  • Burn Down Charts
  • Requirements Stability Chart
• Graphical Charts
  • DistributDistribution of Requirements by Type, Criticality, Source...or any other custom field

These reports can be generated by a number of different reporting engines Kovair supports:

• HTML, enabling direct printing from the Requirements list page
• Export any lists to Excel for additional formatting and manipulation
• Built-in Crystal Report offers easy way to do custom formatting, or create your own reports from scratch
• Word Reporting enables fully customizable formatting with multi-level data elements from Kovair Global Lifecycle

Requirements and Test Management

TestabiliTestability and Verifiability are some of the core properties of a good Requirement. But just Testability is not enough for a successful implementation of Requirements. One needs to actually create Test Cases for each Testable Requirements and test them again and again until the release of the product. A Test Management tool is invaluable to create, execute and manage the Test cases and run results. But it is imperative to have Traceability relations between the Test cases managed by a Test Management software and the Requirements so that as Requirements change, the related Test cases can be kept in step with those changes. Integrated Requirements Management and Test Management in Kovair's Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution work together to give the users the power of QA driven Requirements Management. If a third party Test Management Systems (e.g. Quality Center from HP, Test Manager from IBM Rational) are in current use at a customer, they may be integrated with Kovair's Requirements Management with many-to-many bi-directional Traceability features. For that user will need Kovair's Enterprise Solutionsuct.

Product Benefits