Bringing Requirements to Life to Drive Collaboration and Agreement

Bringing Requirements to Life to Drive Collaboration and Agreement
How Software Simulations Help You Get Requirements Right the First Time
W h i t e Pa p e rM a y 2 0 0 9Bringing Requirements to Life to Drive Collaboration and Agreement
Contents
Executive summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Communication Breakdowns in the Requirements Definition Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Wrong Requirements? Lose Money. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Understanding the Root Cause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Investments in Optimizing Requirements Development Yield Big Returns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Simulations and Visualizations : Keys to Getting Requirements Right the First Time . . . . 6Using Simulations to Elicit and Validate Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Enabling Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Realizing a Chain Reaction of Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Industry Showcases: Proving the Value of Rapid Prototyping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Borland TeamDefine: The Best Tool for the Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Leveraging the Benefits of an Open ALM Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2Bringing Requirements to Life to Drive Collaboration and Agreement
Executive SummarySoftware development projects suffer most when changes in requirements touch off a cascade of delays, revisions, and rework.This happens all too often, as existing processes for establishing requirements are ad-hoc and inefficient, making it difficult forbusiness people to communicate their needs to technology teams. This leads to miscommunications and insufficiently definedrequirements that drive up development costs and delay projects.
To address the root cause of the problem, you need a more effective requirements definition (RD) process that reduces rework,speeds development, and leads to dramatic time and cost savings that maximize the return on your development investments. ® TBorland TeamDefine addresses these challenges by enabling you to bring business and IT together early in the process to quickly iterate on a working model of the desired software. Because you can quickly bring requirements to life in real time andshowcase proposed user interfaces (UIs) and software functionality before you start developing actual code, you can get to theright requirements faster - and with greater confidence - minimizing rework later. Now business and IT professionals can workvisually and collaboratively to discuss, negotiate, agree, and publish requirements in ways that everyone understands: usingvisual models that replicate how the final product should look, feel, and behave.
Communication Breakdowns in the Requirements Definition ProcessSuccessful enterprises are agile and responsive to changing business conditions and customer needs. They have applied best practices to everything from data center management and security to CRM in an effort to maximize efficiency "In the last year, 70% ofand resource utilization. In addition, they have invested heavily in application projects failed to meet development because custom software, which is created by programmers who deadlines, and 50% of work closely with business analysts, is often the best way to match functionality projects fail to meet theexactly with company needs. needs of the business. 80% of the issues stem But when it comes to best practices and efficiency, development projects are often from poor requirements."less successful than other IT initiatives. According to research from the StandishGroup, many projects are plagued by some combination of delays, reduced feature Standish Group Chaossets, budget overruns, and cancellations. Report, 2007The fact is, planning and launching a development project can be complicated - even if you have lots of expe... [download for more]