IBM Software Group

Boost Agility: Ten Best

Practices for Requirements
Driven Software Delivery
Adeel Omer
Alice Cockrum
Brian Bryson
Matthew Holitza

Innovation for a smarter planet 2010 IBM Corporation

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Requirements Driven Software Delivery

Collaboration Automation Reporting

People working Strategies and Metrics for project
together according to techniques to status and decision
a defined process accelerate delivery making

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice #1 Establish Traceability

Maintain business and IT alignment by

linking any artifact or any element in an
artifact to any requirements or other Customers
artifact. Analyst Project Mgr

COST
Manage complexity with detailed
traceability views that display parent-child
DEFECTS +
relationships. DELAYS

Map solution architecture pieces to specific Tester Developer

requirements to ensure specific

requirements have been targeted in the
solution

Identify, prioritize and implement business needs

Innovation for a smarter planet
 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice #2 Manage Evolving Requirements

Improve organization through collections and

snapshots:
Use collections to facilitate review and
approval, and to denote scope
Create snapshots that capture, point to, and
use specific versions of artifact sets Central Hub

Use common repositories for managing all assets

Use asset management to define and enforce
business processes around software delivery
User approved and verified reusable assets
and change them using a defined process

Reduce project risk through improved organization

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice #3 Collaborate with Stakeholders Early and

Often
Spreadsheets Glossaries
Folders

Web review and approval workflow

Models
Improve effectiveness of eliciting, Hyperlinks

elaborating and validating requirements Data

Emails

Give stakeholders web review access, DB DB Documents

Images

comment within scope of review, and

conduct formal and informal reviews.
Sidebar with immediate view of team and recent requirements,
artifacts and comments
Use deployment modeling to communicate IT needs precisely
and effectively between stake holders, architects and
deployment/operations teams

Achieve consensus, increase customer satisfaction!

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice #4: Automate! Automate! Automate!

What is software delivery automation?
Automation of robotic/repetitive tasks
Examples of automation:
Continuous build integration
Unit Testing of Personal, Team and Integration Builds
Automated deployment of configurations and applications to development, test, staging
and production environments
Automated functional, security and performance testing

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Why automate?
Benefits:
Enables teams to quickly adapt to evolving requirements
Frees teams to focus on creative value-added activities
Consistency across development, test and staging Environments
Greater efficiency across lifecycle
Considerations:
Analyze your processes and environments
Management buy-in

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice 5: Use Super Glue!

Benefits: Requirements
Provides a consistent vehicle for Management
all team members to collaborate Continuous
DB
Enables enforceable processes
UI
Integration
Central status reporting LOGIC
DB
UI

Ensures compliance LOGIC

requirements can be easily
verified
Version DB
UI

Control LOGIC

Considerations: DB
UI

Executive and cross- LOGIC

DB
organizational representation UI
Service
Integrates with your existing LOGIC Desk
tools or provides open platform
Quality
Just enough customizability Management
Open source vs Commercial

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice #6 Reporting
Increase productivity with automation through
enhanced reporting and document generation
Users can
generate use case survey documents and
requirements specifications using out-of-the-
box reporting based on Rational Publishing
Engine technology
seed report content from requirement, use-
case diagram, and use case artifacts
customize report details and
generate reports in Microsoft Word, HTML, or
PDF format

Communicate status and results for risk mitigation and continuous improvement

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice #7 Accurate Impact Analysis

Automate the determination of
how your IT is affected by
changing business demands
Forward: determine how
requirements change affects
solution implementation
Reverse: determine how
implementation and
operational limits affect
requirements
Provide platform for
collaboration so nothing slips
between the cracks

Make informed decisions in the face of change

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice # 8 Reliable Change Propagation

Use automation to propagate

minute changes within affected
solutions
Use visual construction,
refactoring and wizards to modify
complex applications
Use change management best
practices
Automated builds, snapshots and
versioning to allow reliable
backtracking if necessary

Accelerate change implementation and improve reliability

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice #9 Adopt a Risk Based Testing Approach

You cannot test every aspect of your code
You should not unilaterally decide what should and should not be tested
You should have a logical team based approach to selecting what makes the plan

This is one example of how to capture risk using Rational Quality Manager

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Practice #10 Be Early

As soon as the requirements are in, plan the test cases
As testable builds arrive
Consider re-using development time tests
Script lightweight manual tests to validate new
functionality
Once functionality is stable, consider automation
This may be after the release
Once the release is out automated manual tests from
previous build
Assemble into regression suites
Throughout, continually run regression suite
Do whatever you can, as soon as you can to stay
ahead
Ensure quality and reliability, validate necessary requirements
Innovation for a smarter planet
 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Requirements Driven Software Delivery

Collaboration Automation Reporting

Collaborate with Automate repetitive Accurate Impact Analysis
Stakeholders Early and process
Often Comprehensive Reporting
Streamlined change
Risk Based Testing management Manage Change
Establish Traceability
Be Early

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software

Additional Resources (All)

Requirements Definition and Management

ibm.com/software/rational/offerings/irm
Change and Release Management
ibm.com/software/rational/offerings/crm
Quality Management
ibm.com/software/rational/offerings/quality/
Architecture Management
ibm.com/software/rational/offerings/architecture/

Innovation for a smarter planet

 IBM Software Group | Rational software
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