What About Requirements Tools?

Many products are on the market, and as many are available for free, that can help with your requirements. Tools can apply automation to the clerical tasks of tracing requirements, linking test results to requirements, change management, semantic analysis, andsoon. While these tools are undoubtedly useful, they should be treated as toolsand nothing more. That is, they should serve as aids to your own efforts, and not as replacements for them. Despite the claims of some vendors, there is norequirements tool that can actually interview a user or determine what your client really needs.

We will not go over the features available on the various tools. By the time you read this book, these features will have changed, some of the vendors will have gone out of business, and new ones will have appeared. If you want to know what is available, then we direct you to the Internet, where you can find the most up-to-date information. We maintain a list on our Volere site, and other helpful sources are cited in the margin.

For information about currently available tools, your authors maintain a listing at volere.co.uk/tools.htm. Ian Alexander maintains a list at http://easyweb.easynet.co The INCOSE list is at paper-review.com/tools/rms/read.php.

Instead of looking at the features of these tools, we want to look the other wayat your requirements for the tools.