[IxDA Discuss] A tool for managing use cases / requirements

[Petteri Hiisilä]

Jeff Axup kirjoitti 24.3.2007 kello 0:27:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm working on a project where we're entering into a large  
> requirements
> analysis stage. This will involve a large number of use cases  
> (often called
> scenarios). The use cases need to be directly tied to corresponding
> requirements. There will be high and low level use cases, with some as
> subsets of others. Additionally, they need to be tied to user roles  
> (and
> personas at times), and there will often be a many-to-one pairing  
> between
> roles and uses cases, and requirements and use cases. So a static  
> tree model
> probably won't work.

Hi,

There aren't many good solutions for this. Many of them understand  
poorly about top-level scenarios, human goals and organization's  
intentions.

http://www.telelogic.com/products/doors/index.cfm

Check out DOORS by Telelogic. It can input use cases and requirements  
of different abstraction levels and link them together. I haven't  
used it myself yet, but our next project will use it. I feel pretty  
OK with it so far, after checking it one.

At a quick glance it seemed to do what it promises, but it isn't  
pretty and it's not a design tool. It's a development and project  
management tool. Your developers and project managers should  
appreciate the hierarchical presentation style that DOORS offers.

You input the scenarios and requirements and order them in  
hierarchical trees. Cross-referencing is trivial to do. And it can  
print out documents.

Still, we will make User & Domain Analysis and Form & Behavior specs   
as separate documents because managers and stakeholders need to read  
them too. DOORS can't fill this void. U&DA is there for tackling  
organizational issues and human motivations (user goals).

Petteri

--
  Petteri Hiisilä
  Senior Interaction Designer
  iXDesign / +358505050123 /
  petteri.hiisila at ixdesign.fi

  "Simple is better than complex.
   Complex is better than complicated."
   - Tim Peters