Queries checklist for best Requirements tool

Requirements management tools are important for an enterprise and there are a number of specific requirements that are needed, so here is ready-made query checklist for you to look at while you consider the right requirements management tool.

• Does your requirements management tool offer formatting tools that can include multiple Undo-Redo, symbols and embedded link to other Requirements?
• Can you be assured of the requirement management tools promise of delivering specific attributes for each requirement?
• Does your tool offer best requirements management training to ensure correct implementation of processes?
• Does your requirements tool allow for best test management?
• Can the tool prioritize requirements such as collaborative ranking, decision support system, etc?
• Is the tool’s configurability flexible to accommodate different philosophies of managing requirements?
• Can the tool effectively handle change requests?
• Can you ably associate non-conformance to a requirement without too much of a hassle?
• Can it define a workflow for requirement revision process internally without too much trouble?
• Is the tool able to help you keep track of costs (including planned costs, actual costs, etc.) for every requirement?
• Does the tool inherently possess the element of showcasing interdependencies between various requirements?
• Can it create sub requirements and nesting of sub-items right up to n-levels?
• Does your tool allow you to create requirements traceability relationships among the records of the same entity?
• Can your tool offer optimized visual hierarchy of requirements with multiple many-to-many relations?
• Can your tool offer multiple views for requirements with controls such as view and filter?
• Can you keep a track of requirements as well as modifications and edits made in the same?
• Does the tool allow for you to view the entire lifecycle of a requirement including all the interdependencies along the way?
• Does the tool allow you to view the originator of the requirement for possible future references along with the ability to also view the location of when the requirement originated?
• Is it possible to view everything and each requirement that affects and impacts any facility?
• Does the tool accord for version control?
• Is it possible for the tool to design documents in version history while also being able to trace requirement to a source file?
• Does the tool allow for viewing of all traceability relations?
• Does your tool allow for best reporting features such as html reports, excel reports, crystal reports, word reports, etc?

Hopefully these for e mentioned top queries checklist can provide enterprises with some insight on what to expect from an optimized requirements management tool.

Learn more about: -  Application lifecycle management & IT service Management.

Benefits and Features of ITSM as a Single Solution Offering

An IT Service Management (ITSM) Studio ideally offers a workflow based configurable global platform for implementing ITSM processes distributed over multiple geographic locations and across multiple organizations, accessed 24x7 over the Web. ITSM is available as both On-Premise and Software as a Service (SaaS) offering.

Some salient features of a successful ITSM are

Customizable Workspace:
The workspace is available with industry-standard components of ITSM and are defined with a set of standard attributes (ITIL v3 compliant), which a user can change as per his/her business needs.

Process Automation:  
Processes are managed by the built-in process automation workflow engine. The workflow of all transactional entities-Service Request, Incident, Problem and Change- are automated and task-based, eliminating the risk of human error associated with manual intervention.

End-to-End Traceability:  
Traceability is an advanced ITSM feature that allows a user to manage functional dependencies between Service Requests, Incidents, Problems and Change Management, or a combination of these. Incident becomes easier by setting a traceability relation between transactional components.

Automated Business Rules:
Policy refers to 'business rule' that executes certain actions based on an occurrence of a particular event, schedule, escalation parameters or validation of an event. With the help of enterprise service bus architecture ITSM Studio can provides the facility to implement service-oriented business rules in terms of Policies.

Multiple Input Methods:
Any item such as Service Request, Incident or Change Request can be captured using rich text editor, submitting through a corporate website or portal, sending via email, importing from MS Word, MS Excel and configurable CSV file, and by using any third party tools in real time if synchronized.

Consolidated Reports:
Graphical and non-graphical reports help Service Managers evaluate the quality of service operation, service delivery and distribution of IT assets/Configuration Items among the customers. An ITSM Studio generally allows for the creation of a wide array of reports that can be created separately for each ITSM component. Getting these real time reports with an accurate data helps make faster decisions.

Dashboards:
ITSM provides ready-to-use Dashboard Reports exposed through different gadgets. Viewing all reports from one place helps the manager do less navigation in the solution and make quick decisions on service operations and service delivery.

Benefits of ITSM as a Single Solution Offering

Business benefits
In any service organization, Implementation of IT processes compliant to ITIL v3, strengthens the business process and improves the quality of Service Operations and Service Delivery. Meeting customer expectations and understanding what is expected by a customer becomes amply clear to service providers. Therefore, in a customer-focused business operation, there is enhancement of customer satisfaction and the probability of customer retention.

Financial benefits:
By virtue of ITIL best practices, the three major components of a service organization – People, Process, and Technology – get streamlined, reducing the cost of service operations. For example, the services are not over-engineered by introducing customer-focused service operations or the recurrence of Problems can be prevented by implementing a well-defined root-cause analysis and by adopting change implementation process, the impact of change in the business can be optimized.

Financial benefits:
ITSM does not undermine the right synchronization of ‘People’ and ‘Process’ in IT service operations. IT service operations become more customer-focused, letting employees clearly know their responsibilities by adopting ITIL best practices. Using Self-Service portal or Service Catalog employees become more motivated and productive.

Employee benefits:
ITSM has a straight forward approach towards ‘roles and responsibilities’ of people participating in IT service operations. So, even if different service groups are involved in a process, each of them knows their area of operations and responsibilities on a reported Service Request,

Internal benefits:
ITSM has a straight forward approach towards ‘roles and responsibilities’ of people participating in IT service operations. So, even if different service groups are involved in a process, each of them knows their area of operations and responsibilities on a reported Service Request, Incident, Problem or a Change. The inter-team communication and collaboration improves as different workgroups or roles get synchronized in a process.

A single solution with all the required built-in applications for IT service Management Solution brings a great advantage to organizations small to very large.

Learn more about: - application lifecycle management & integration bus.

Using ALM tools to achieve IT governance and compliance

Governance and compliance have become important elements in the overall control and health of a large enterprise. These two elements have become mandated competencies for any enterprise that wants to stay in business in our present day’s global technology-centric environment. All public companies are mandated by Federal laws which include section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 that stands for establishing effective practices such as reporting and operational controls such as Change Management. There are quite a few procedures have a number of standards and frameworks that can help implement such practices which includes IEEE 12207 lifecycle processes, ISACA Cobit 4.1, SEI CMMI and the itSMF ITIL v 3.  

The Sarbanes-Oxley law has given the right impetus for enterprises to review their reporting and operational controls. Yet there are quite a few enterprises who failed to achieve improved productivity through their effective implementation of these controls. An unsuccessful failed audit can have enterprises scrambling to quickly meet the letter of the law in order to stay compliant. Such instances may cause gross loss of competitive advantage. Implementing improved controls and processes can provide the enterprise with the potential to enhance their productivity and value.

Enterprises should engage such application lifecycle management tools that helps remove the ambiguity and realize improved productivity through the proper implementation of the Cobit 4.1 framework and, effortlessly aids enterprises to achieve the objectives of IT Governance and compliance. Such ALM tools when coupled with the right kind of requirements management tools can help enterprises define the exact tasks necessary to implement each of the control practices required to meet the control objective of “setting up formal change management procedures to handle in a standardized manner all requests (including maintenance and patches) for changes to applications, procedures, processes, system and service parameters, and the underlying platforms”. It can help develop, document, and promulgate a change management framework that specifies the policies and processes including the diverse roles and responsibilities, it can help classify and prioritize all changes based on business risk, authorize and approve all changes by the business process owners and IT and also help track the status of changes.

Optimized ALM tools can also help establish and maintain version control over all changes by assisting in the implementation of roles and responsibilities that involve business process owners and appropriate technical IT functions. Furthermore it can ensure appropriate segregation of duties. These tools can assist in establishing appropriate record management practices and audit trails to record key steps in the change management process and can help ensure timely closure of changes. These tools can help enterprises in allowing only authorized personnel to enter specific requested changes, organized by predefined categories.

Implementing IT Governance and compliance is all about confirming that things are done at the right time and in the right manner. It also concerns requirements traceability and providing visibility to all stakeholders.

Learn more about :-  alm solutions   &  integration bus

Prerequisites of an Agile Solution

An agile solution can be used to implement various tools necessary in a distributed development scenario. Configurability is an important element, since the solution needs to be extended and further configured to incorporate any organizational needs which may be beyond pre-defined methodology definitions. The agile solution needs to support artifacts, entities and objects including projects, releases, sprints, product backlogs, daily scrum meetings, test cases, issues/changes. Therefore an agile solution needs to have the ability to deal with multiple project release, capture all major meeting aspects, engage in optimized traceability relations and integrate visual issues, process designs and handle implementations.

Effective application lifecycle management solutions should not require too much product support and maintenance. Therefore such agile solutions need to be able to selectively import from various sources including previous projects. Managing backlogs and entities is an important step since these backlog items are assigned to different users independent of their locations, therefore agile solutions should allow for user access from anywhere anytime. Additionally it should also offer ways to manage tools and categorize high level requirements optimally. An efficient agile solution can also offer best change management solution that can allow users and project members to enter various Backlogs as Issues/ defects/ change and enhancement requests. Also it should allow for routing of these items through appropriate workflows based on the backlog types. Risks management is also an important feature of such an agile solution, wherein risks can be entered, tracked and related to backlog Items.

The solution should support planning and allow for best traceability view by which users can get a complete visibility to all the artifacts that are linked to one another which eventually would facilitate in either tracing forward or backward starting from any particular artifact. The solution should also account for discussion-threads that allows one to capture a complete history of the decision making process. It should support multi-threaded discussions in terms of Contextual Comments and offer a built-in comments section that can be exposed to the users via system pre-defined or custom defined forms. This section enables users to carry out multi-threaded discussions in the context of each Backlog. A drag-and-drop graphical designer in the agile solution can offer numerous benefits including better design, implementation, enforcement and automation. Such a solution will ensure that tasks will be automatically created for one or more users based on roles they play. Also it will ensure that when the tasks are completed the process creates a new set of tasks for a new set of users. These are the prerequisites for an optimized agile solution that will ensure best process management.

Learn more about: - issue management tools  & Requirements management tool