RequirementsLINK™

Requirements LINK™ is a project-oriented, web-based repository system that allows you to view, collaborate, and manage project-specific architectural models and their associated requirements throughout the lifetime of a project, from inception to implementation.

All the information that you gather during a project – the diagrams you create and the requirements you define – become project assets that can be brought together in Requirements LINK's Knowledge Asset Repository and viewed via a standard Internet browser. Requirements LINK assigns IDs, allows you to manage asset status, and tracks high-level client requirements through to system requirements, design, and testing.

Because we believe that visual models are the best means to capture complex requirements, Requirements LINK has been designed to work with modeling tools such as System Architect. Team members, along with subject matter experts, work in these tools to create diagrams – process maps, use case diagrams, data models, or others – that illustrate what the client requires. On extract, Requirements LINK interprets the diagrams, generates a set of textual requirements and builds the relationships among requirements, and from requirements to the models that spawned them. LINK's visual user interface presents the models, definitions and requirements in an easy-to-follow network of related items and provides reporting and export capabilities. Reviewers have access to the latest information anywhere, anytime, without any special software.

Requirements LINK is a requirements management tool, a traceability tool, a collaboration tool, and a change management tool. How does it work?

Step 1: Analysts and designers create diagrams (business process models, use case models, data models, or others) along with underlying textual definitions in a repository-based modeling tool such as System Architect. They can also specify text requirements such as key performance parameters or technical constraints.

Step 2: A Requirements LINK administrator prepares the project site and provides access privileges for users.

Step 3: When ready for sharing or review, the team uses Requirements LINK 's extract, transform, and load functionality to build a database of project assets, their properties and their relationships. The extract program brings over the diagrams and definitions from the modeling tool, and interprets the information to create text-based functional, data, and information exchange requirements. Each requirement is assigned a tracking ID and an initial status code.

Step 4: Reviewers use a web browser to open Requirements LINK , select assets to examine, navigate to links and see text detail behind each diagram symbol. If a reviewer wants to make comments or see comments made by others, that's easy to do. Requirements LINK tracks all comments and provides reports that can be generated by date or by reviewer name. Reviewers can also subscribe to a project asset in order to be notified of any changes or deletions. Detailed history is kept on each asset.

Step 5: Once a review cycle is complete, Requirements LINK can be used to compile all the comments, approvals, and issues for analysts to use to update their models and definitions. Once assets are updated, they can be uploaded to Requirements LINK again, for another cycle. A series of reports allows the project manager to track the status of each project asset, and check what's been reviewed and what hasn't. If a requirement is approved or is tagged for needed change, an administrator can change the requirement status.

Step 6: When the system is ready for design, development and testing, artifacts can be linked to the assets stored in Requirements LINK so that there is full lifecycle traceability.

Step 7: Information in the Requirements LINK database can be queried by users or exported to other applications. A set of pre-formatted reports is available to generate requirements documentation in Word.

DEA Also Offers Enterprise LINK ™ - How Is Requirements LINK Different?

Requirements LINK is geared toward projects. It is intended to house project assets and be a focus where team members can review those assets and make comments or approvals.

Enterprise LINK is intended to house enterprise-level artifacts. It can be configured to publish and support any kind of information, whether the goal is to develop a full enterprise architecture, to communicate business area nformation to managers and operational staff, to build a meta data repository, or to manage the IT system portfolio.

Both Enterprise LINK and Requirements LINK are built on the same technology, so that work you do in a project can be promoted, if appropriate, to the enterprise level.

When you buy Requirements LINK to support a project, Doreen Evans Associates assesses your needs and the type of project you're doing. We then quickly complete the rules to implement Requirements LINK to meet your requirements – with the types of assets, the properties and the relationships that are meaningful to you and your project team.

Models and definitions are published from System Architect encyclopedias using an intermediate extract and transform application. This application uses System Architect API to access repository information, apply transformation rules and imports it into the Link intermediate meta-model data store. This data store is implemented as a SQL MSDE database.

The information in the intermediate Link data store is then published to the Link publishing repository using MS DTS packages. The publishing repository is a highly scalable and optimized SQL Server 2000 database which supports archiving and versioning of published information (snapshots).

The Link framework architecture is built using ASP.NET, VB.NET, SQL Server 2000, MS DTS.

Server Configuration Requirements

Operating System: Windows 2000 or later
Processor: 1 Ghz
Memory: 1 Gb RAM
Hard Drive: 30 Gb EIDE
Tape Drive: 20/40Gb SCSi DAT Tape Drive
Backup Software: Ultrabac backup software or similar
Bandwidth: 30 Gb/month
Firewall: Netscreen-5 Firewall
Database: MS SQL Standard Edition, 1 CPU License