Development programs for military systems can be massive projects involving numerous engineering teams, procurement professionals, subcontractors, and even consultants. Managing such efforts is by no means trivial but, thankfully, now somewhat easier with the help of the latest version of the DOORS software system from Telelogic (Malmo, Sweden). The DOORS®/ERS Version 7.0 software system now features Dynamic Requirements Management and Intelligent Traceability™ capabilities to aid commercial and military program managers even in an environment of rapidly changing system requirements.
Dynamic Requirements Management is the practice of effectively managing an evolving set of requirements within a complex incremental/iterative development project. Traditionally, hardware- and software-development programs have established a set of specifications at the beginning of a program and matched the design to those requirements. But with modern systems and software development involving changing requirements, a more practical approach is to allow the specifications to evolve during the lifetime of the development program, for example, as suppliers are changed and new components are substituted for no-longer-available parts. Unfortunately, requirements management tools have lacked the functionality needed to effectively track ever-evolving changes, and thus the motivation to create this improved version of the DOORS software system.
DOORS/ERS 7.0 features Proactive Suspect Links and an Enterprise Change Proposal System (ECPS) as part of its Dynamic Requirements Management and Intelligent Traceability capabilities. The multiplatform, enterprise-wide DOORS system is currently used by more than 1000 companies around the world for capturing, linking, tracing, analyzing, and managing changes to information to ensure a project's compliance to specified requirements and standards.
The Intelligent Traceability function supports automated full life-cycle traceability for all requirements, objects, and attributes, which is critical when working with parallel development teams. The traceability allow users to set performance/requirement milestones during the course of a project in order to track and document program progress. Intelligent Traceability ensures that all teams are using the right requirements for the program increment or version they are working on. Links are intelligently kept with the right baseline as the project progresses ensuring conformance and quality. Intelligent Traceability supports parallel development by teams working on different versions by allowing links to be made to different sets of baselined data.
The Proactive Suspect Links function automatically ensures that each team member knows about changes made by another member. Version 7.0 of DOORS proactively generates change notification directly in the requirements documents. Without even referring to the modified document, users can see the change that caused the link to become suspect. Users can quickly assess the impact of any related change and decide whether action is required, or they can simply clear the Suspect Link flag. Users can even see whether changes have been baselined.
DOORS/ERS 7.0's ECPS provides a role-based view of the requirements component of the overall change process, managed by Telelogic's ChangeSynergy™ change-management solution. Version 2.0 of ECPS is a configurable change process that enables users to submit, review, and approve changes within the requirements document. DOORS/ERS 7.0 is available for Microsoft Windows 98 (SE), Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a or Windows XP, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX B.11 (32- and 64-b versions), and Sun Solaris 8 or 9. Telelogic North America, Inc., 9401 Jeronimo Rd., Irvine, CA 92618; (949) 830-8022, FAX: (949) 830-8023, e-mail: [email protected], Internet: www.telelogic.com.