IBM Rational RequisitePro

v2003.06
Evaluators’ Guide
 IBM Rational RequisitePro Evaluators Guide

PREFACE
Welcome to the IBM Rational RequisitePro® Evaluators Guide. This guide has been written to help you
understand IBM Rational’s requirements management approach and product offerings.

About IBM Rational and the Full Life-Cycle Solution

IBM Rational RequisitePro, the requirements management tool you are about to review, is supported and
maintained by IBM Rational, which helps organizations create business value by improving their software
development capability. Partnering with a leader like IBM ensures you will receive high quality support
and mentoring for your projects – a key ingredient of successful software development.

IBM Rational is unique at providing not just software tools but also a set of software engineering best
practices; an integrated set of software tools spanning the entire development lifecycle; and services to
help individuals, teams, and organizations accelerate their software development by leveraging lessons
learned.

As you review IBM Rational RequisitePro, keep in mind that while IBM Rational RequisitePro addresses
your immediate requirements management needs, it is also included in several IBM Rational offerings,
more noticeably the Rational Team Unifying Platform, an open and integrated set of collaborative tools
for software teams. Aside from IBM Rational RequisitePro, IBM Rational Team Unifying Platform includes:

IBM Rational ClearQuest A defect and change request tool to effectively collect
enhancement requests allowing you to easily incorporate
customer and user requests
IBM Rational ClearCase-LT A configuration management tool to version and baseline all
project artifacts
IBM Rational TestManager A test management tool to link test cases to requirements and
ensure your testing efforts stay in sync with changing
requirements
IBM Rational Unified Process Browser-based process guidelines that improve team
performance through industry-proven best practices
IBM Rational ProjectConsole A project status tool to provide quick and reliable reports on
project status
IBM Rational SoDA A software documentation tool to generate live reports from all
domain (requirements, test, design, change requests, defects)
IBM developerWorks: Rational An online community of more than 80,000 members with access
to over 2500 targeted artifacts, whitepapers, articles, best
practices, training, and topical discussions.

Because requirements should not live in a silo, the IBM Rational Team Unifying Platform provides tight
integrations between Rational RequisitePro and its other components. Depending on your needs, you
should consider either IBM Rational RequisitePro or IBM Rational Team Unifying Platform. IBM Rational
RequisitePro is also included in IBM Rational Suite.

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Requirements Management Overview

Application development is a complex undertaking. The software technologies you apply to this challenge
are becoming more powerful, yet complexity still remains. To streamline and manage this complexity,
you must clearly define the problem you are facing and the solution to that problem. Only then can you
develop and deliver solutions that satisfy real customer needs.

Unfortunately, most project teams tend to forge ahead building solutions to problems that are not clearly
understood. Studies repeatedly show that neglecting to carefully elicit user input and poor management
of project requirements are the most significant reasons that more than 70 percent of all software
projects fail or are severely impaired (CHAOS, The Standish Group International, Inc., Dennis, MA).

Getting a handle on the “front end” of the software development lifecycle is an essential first step to
delivering a product or application that is of value to its users. Understanding real-world problems, and
recording user needs associated with these problems is key to developing valuable business value to your
customers. Without such understanding, your team is likely to develop an off-target solution, miss a
critical window of opportunity, or be overrun by the competition. The better your team understands the
problem space, the firmer the foundation upon which you build the solution. IBM provides requirements
management training classes to educate software professionals on problem analysis.

As a natural and logical outcome of problem analysis, project teams define requirements for a system.
Just as careful directions help you reach a particular geographic destination, defining the requirements
for a system is critical in assuring that a project reaches its target. Beyond defining requirements,
effective requirements management is essential to keeping a well-defined project on track.

An effective requirements management process reduces project risks by systematically collecting,

managing, and communicating the changing requirements of any project. The purpose of requirements
management is to establish a common understanding between your team and your customer on what
you will build for that customer. A well-implemented requirements management process not only helps
your team deliver a quality product on time and within budget, but it can also ensure the viability of the
entire project.

Studies have shown that most software teams document requirements in Microsoft Word®. Yet
documents are limited in their ability to organize the requirements in these documents, as well as track
information other than the text of requirements. So the challenge of a successful requirements
management tool is to combine the communicative power of documents with analytical capabilities to
track requirements. IBM Rational RequisitePro® has gained popularity as a requirements management
tool because it achieves this dual goal. IBM Rational RequisitePro® central requirements repository stores
valuable requirements information such as requirement attributes, requirement status, relationships
between requirements, and revision history, providing the capability to sort, query, and track
requirements. Without that ability, it is nearly impossible to track project status and achieve project
success.

With the right requirements management tool, any organization's chance of success increases
dramatically. Nowhere is this more true than in software development, where the pressure to deliver
high-quality applications in the least amount of time has become a make or break factor for thousands of
companies.

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IBM Rational RequisitePro Evaluation Guide

Key Benefits of IBM Rational RequisitePro

Features alone add no value unless they solve a problem and ease a pain. The list below includes
software pains and the benefits provided by IBM Rational RequisitePro.

1. Dynamic integration between Microsoft Word® and requirements database

Pain
Requirements stored only in a database lack context and are difficult for stakeholders to
understand. Requirements stored only in documents are hard to organize, prioritize, and track.
Benefit
With IBM Rational RequisitePro there is little to no learning curve (i.e. faster product
adoption leading to quicker return on investment), as requirements can be created and
updated directly in Microsoft Word®, a familiar environment for most people. Documents
contain requirements in addition to contextual text that is vital for understanding
requirements. The integrated database (IBM DB2, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server or Access)
allows you to organize, prioritize, and track project requirements, something Word alone
cannot do well.

2. Integrations with lifecycle software development tools

Pain
Developers and testers deserve to view the latest state of requirements. Yet, it is inefficient and
error-prone to duplicate requirements in development and testing tools.
Benefit
IBM Rational RequisitePro is integrated with IBM Rational Rose XDE, IBM Rational
TestManager, IBM Rational SoDA, IBM Rational Unified Process and IBM Rational ClearQuest,
as well as Microsoft Project. Integrated tools provide a smooth workflow and eliminate errors
due to requirement discrepancies across tools. Integrations keep the entire project team in
sync and improve team productivity. Easy access to requirements from other tools
encourages all team members to view the requirements before starting their work.

3. Distributed access to requirements

Pain
Distributed team members are not provided the latest requirements information and when
pressed in time, may forge ahead with obsolete information.
Benefit
The Web interface of IBM Rational RequisitePro provides most of the IBM Rational
RequisitePro functionality. Anyone with Web access can view and edit requirements,
attributes and traceability links as well as create and edit documents quickly and efficiently.

4. Requirements traceability and coverage analysis

Pain
End-users are disappointed that the functionality they expected is not present in the delivered
product because not all requirements were implemented.
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Benefit
IBM Rational RequisitePro support for traceability allows you to easily set up and track
relationships between requirements to verify whether high-level requirements are associated
with detailed software requirements. Querying these relationships provides coverage analysis
to ensure completeness and to make sure time is not wasted building irrelevant functionality.

5. Impact of requirement change

Pain
Requirements change and it is difficult to understand the impact change has on the system and
on other requirements.
Benefit
With IBM Rational RequisitePro, when traceability is established between requirements, and
one of the requirement changes, suspect links automatically appear. This allows you to
identify other requirements that may be affected by a change. When using IBM Rational
Rose XDE, suspect links are displayed between changing requirements and their associated
design elements, so that it is clear what parts of the system are affected. Understanding the
impact of change allows you to more accurately assess the potential cost in time and money
of changing requirements.

6. Requirements attributes and query capability

Pain
When requirements are selected on an ad-hoc basis, the resulting system may not provide the
best solution for your customers or your business. Without documenting risk, priority, and
difficulty associated with each requirement, you cannot objectively define which requirements
should be implemented first.
Benefit
With IBM Rational RequisitePro, defining attributes like priority, difficulty, and cost and
having the ability to sort and filter requirements based on these attribute values allows
project managers to objectively identify the highest value requirements.

7. Requirements audit trail

Pain
It is impossible to tell who created or modified a requirement and why.
Benefit
IBM Rational RequisitePro automatically keeps track of all changes to requirements, including
who made the change, when and why it was made, and what the change was. It is often
important for scoping purposes to understand why specific features are included and how the
decision was reached. Requirements revision histories record the rationale behind project
decisions so valuable time isn’t wasted revisiting the same issues over again.

8. Central and repository for all requirement assets

Pain
Requirements are updated with no version history; requirements documents are emailed around,
and team members are unsure of which version is the latest one, or team members are working
with different versions of the requirements.

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Benefit
IBM Rational RequisitePro stores all requirement information in a database that acts as a
central repository to all team members. The information in the repository can be linked to
documents to allow quick access to the most current version of a document.

9. Controlled access to requirements information

Pain
Requirements are modified by team members not authorized to do so, resulting in requirements
that are no longer representative of customers’ needs.
Benefit
The integrity of requirements is assured because requirements can only be created and
modified by those with permission privileges. Security can be established at various levels,
from groups of requirements to individual attributes and even specific attribute values.

10. Customizable requirement structure

Pain
Requirements are often numerous and not logically organized.
Benefit
User-defined requirement types allow you to organize requirements into various categories,
making the requirements easier to understand and report upon. Each requirement type has
a unique set of attributes associated with it (such as priority, status, and risk) to weigh each
requirement and facilitate scope management. Document types specify user-defined
document templates to promote consistency across all documents. Your project structure
should map to your own requirements management process.

11. Requirements project templates

Pain
Setting up the requirements management tool to map to your requirements management process
– in other words, creating a “project structure" (requirement types, attributes, document types,
users, etc.) - can be time consuming and awkward.
Benefit
Out-of-the-box and user-defined project templates speed the creation of new projects,
reducing project development time. You can also leverage reusable requirements assets
between your projects by creating new project templates from existing Rational RequisitePro
projects.

With IBM Rational RequisitePro, you can:

• Capture, track, manage, and analyze different types of requirements
• Specify who is authorized to modify requirements, attributes, and documents
• Understand the impact of changing requirements
• Support distributed team members via the Web
• Integrate with market leading lifecycle tools, including solutions for defect and change tracking,
visual modeling, automated testing, configuration management, and process guidelines - tools that
support the entire software development team as well as the software development process.

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IBM Rational RequisitePro Test Drive

In this test drive, you’ll follow step-by-step instructions to create a new Rational RequisitePro project, You
are ready to start using Rational RequisitePro!

♦ The test drive assumes basic knowledge of the Windows operating system.
♦ Menu selections, button clicks, and other actions are represented with a bullet.
♦ Explanations and unique features are covered in the italicized text.

System Requirements for the Test Drive

• System:
500 MHz or greater
200 MB free disk space
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, 2000, or XP

• Software:
Microsoft Word 2000, 2002 (Office XP) or 2003

• Database:
None. RequisitePro supports IBM DB2, Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server. For simplicity, this test drive
will create a Microsoft Access. You do not need MS Access installed.

Section 1 - Installing IBM Rational RequisitePro

If you have not already do so, from the IBM Trials and Beta site, under ‘Software products’, select
Rational RequisitePro to download the latest Rational RequisitePro evaluation software.

Make sure to also download the evaluation license key.

Follow these steps to install Rational RequisitePro.

1. Install Rational RequisitePro

Close all programs and double click on the downloaded file. This process will store to
your local disk the necessary files to install Rational RequisitePro.
When the “Welcome to the Setup Wizard” dialog box is displayed, click “Next”.
On the “Product Selection” pane, select “Rational RequisitePro” in, and click “Next”.
Leave the default “Desktop Installation from CD Image”, and click “Next”.
On the Welcome pane, click Next.
NOTE: If you have versions of Rational tools older than v2003 installed on the machine,
product warnings will be displayed. Do not install this evaluation unless you are ready to
upgrade your other IBM Rational tools to v2003.
On the “License Agreement” pane, read the agreement, then select the “I accept….”
Option, and click “Next”.
On the Destination Folder pane, click Next.
On the Custom Setup pane, leave the default selection. Click “Next”, and “Next” again.
In the “Ready to Install” pane, click “Install”.
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When the installation is complete, click Finish. Optionally review the README and the
IBM developerWorks: Rational browser pages automatically displayed, and close them.
Close the Rational License Key Administrator window that automatically opened.

2. Enter evaluation license key

Double click on the *.upd file you downloaded. The Rational License Key Administrator will
open and import the key for you.
Close the License Key Administrator confirmation dialog.

Congratulations! You are ready to start using Rational RequisitePro!

Section 2 – IBM Rational RequisitePro

For more information than what is provided in this simple test drive please see IBM developerWorks:
Rational.

1. Set up a new project

Select “Start”, “Programs”, “Rational Software”, "Rational RequisitePro".

IBM Rational RequisitePro starts with the "Let's Go Rational RequisitePro" window that
provides access to help and guidance on various topics about requirements management
and IBM Rational RequisitePro.

Click the "Go!” button and browse the information available. Note that “the Let’s Go
Rational RequisitePro” window links to online Rational RequisitePro resources. When you
are ready to process, close the “Let’s Go RequisitePro” window. You can display this
window at any time using the Rational RequisitePro Help>Let’s Go RequisitePro menu.

Select File > New > Project.

Every IBM Rational RequisitePro project is created from a project template. Several
project templates are provided. You can also create your own from existing IBM Rational
RequisitePro projects (using the “Make New Template” option).

Click the "Use-Case Template” icon . Click the "OK" button.

Notice the database options available and enter “Test Drive” as the project name. Click
"OK".
When asked if you want to create a new directory for the project, click "Yes".
When the project is successfully created, click “Close” in the confirmation dialog.

Without any special setup, you can start capturing your requirements in IBM Rational
RequisitePro. New projects automatically create a MS access database to store
requirements, or you can use the DB2 UDB Components for Rational products included in
the package. You can later migrate the database to either DB2 Enterprise Edition, Oracle to
SQL Server using a migration wizard provided by IBM Rational.
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* Key Benefit *
IBM Rational RequisitePro project templates simplify and jumpstart the project set-up process.
Out-of-the-box project templates include those for projects using a Use Case methodology as
well as for those using a more traditional methodology or a hybrid of the two. Use cases are a
user-oriented way of defining requirements that have been found to be very easy to understand
by customers, users, and the development team. In addition to the predefined templates, it is
easy to set up new templates customized to the needs of your organization.

Your Test Drive project is now ready for you to enter new requirements.

If your user name is not identified in the project, the Project Logon dialog is displayed to
identify you as a user. Select the ‘Unknown’ username and replace it with ‘alex’.
Once the project is open, right-click the name of your new project (next to the pyramid
in the requirements explorer on the left side of the screen), and choose “Properties".
This will show the structure of the project you just created.
Explore the various tabs on the "Project Properties" dialog box. Of particular interest are
the "Document Types", "Requirement Types", and "Attributes" tabs; Click on the Help
button to learn more about these project properties. Users with appropriate privileges
have the ability to customize all of these items to meet the needs of the project.
Click “Cancel” when finished browsing the "Project Properties" dialog box.
From the menu, select File >Close Project. Click “Yes” when asked to confirm.

* Key Benefit *
Customization of IBM Rational RequisitePro projects allows you to create projects that best map
to your specific requirement management process – from document templates, requirement
attributes to requirement types to categorize requirements.

2. Open an existing project

You have just seen how easy it is to set up the structure of a new project. Next, you will open
an existing project already populated with requirements.

Pull down the "File" menu and choose "Open Project".

In the "Open Project" dialog box, select the "Learning Project – Use Cases" project
The Project Logon dialog may display the name you entered previously. Click OK.

This test drive uses the “Learning Project – Use Cases” project which includes product features,
use cases (to document functional software requirements) and supplementary requirements (to
document non-functional software requirements, such as performance, reliability, etc…).

Once the project is open, the requirements explorer, on the left, displays all requirement assets
(documents, requirements, views) and allows navigate through the project.

3. Create a new requirement

Expand the package (folder) called "Features and Vision".

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Rational RequisitePro requirements packages help you organize requirements information to

provide quick access to your users. A package can contain any requirements documents ,
views (queries) and individual requirements .
Double-click the "Vision Document" to open the document in Microsoft Word®. Click Yes
if a dialog is displayed. Notice the "RequisitePro" menu and toolbar now available in
Microsoft Word® (if the toolbar is not automatically displayed, select
View>Toolbars>Rational RequisitePro). Depending on your preference, you may want to
dock the floating Rational RequisitePro toolbar to the main toolbar.

IBM Rational RequisitePro seamlessly integrates into Microsoft Word®, the most popular
environment to document requirements.

IBM Rational RequisitePro also ships with the industry-proven Rational Unified Process
requirement templates, such as a Vision document to record the project stated problem and
high-level features of the proposed solution to this problem.

In the Vision document, scroll down to section 4 labeled “Product Features”.

Features are informal statements of capabilities of the system used for marketing and product
positioning purposes, as a short-hand for a set of behaviors of the system. Features are often not
precise enough to be true requirements yet RequisitePro can capture them as ‘RequisitePro
requirements’ to track them.

Colored text indicates information you want to track – such as features and requirements (to
differentiate it from the contextual information around it). All marked requirements are stored in
the database.

Position your cursor anywhere in colored text, right click and select “Requirement
Properties.” From MS Word, the Requirement Properties dialog displays information
stored in the database. Click “cancel” to dismiss the dialog.
Position your cursor at the end of the “4.2. ClassicsCD.com Administration System”
section (after FEAT14) and enter the following text:
Ability to alert customers about new offerings.
With your mouse, select your new text.
Right click on your selection and select “New Requirement…”. Alternatively, you can

click the New Requirement icon on the Rational RequisitePro toolbar, or pull down
the "RequisitePro" menu and click "Requirement > New".

The "Requirement Properties: FEATpending1" dialog box appears. Notice the selected text listed
as the requirement text property.

Enter “New Offerings” in the Name field.

Click the "Attributes" tab. Pull down the list box for "Type" and choose "Functional". Set
the "Priority" to "Must".
Click "OK" to accept the changes you have made in the "Requirement Properties" dialog
box. The selected text is now colored with the FEAT color and prefixed with a
"FEATpending1" tag.

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Click on the Rational RequisitePro toolbar “Save Requirements Document” icon .

Alternatively, pull down the “RequisitePro” menu and select “Document”, “Save”. The
new requirement is permanently tagged (FEAT16) and stored in the database.
From the Word menu, select File > Close.

Upon requirement creation, IBM Rational RequisitePro automatically assigns permanent

requirement numbers (numbered in the order of requirement creation).

You have just created a new product feature of high priority. That information has been stored in
the database upon saving your document.

* Key Benefit *
The IBM Rational RequisitePro integration with Microsoft Word® allows members of your team to
work in a familiar environment, making it easy to adopt. Documents are a natural way to
communicate requirements but, because they are not as good for querying and sorting, IBM
Rational RequisitePro supplements Microsoft Word® documents with a database linked to the
documents.

4. Navigate and organize requirements

In Microsoft Word®, from the RequisitePro toolbar, click the icon, or pull down the
RequisitePro menu and select "Show RequisitePro Explorer".
In the “Features ad Vision” folder, notice the new requirement (FEAT16) is selected.
Double-click it. Even though the Word document is closed, this action takes you directly
to the location in the Vision document where you created the requirement.

* Key Benefit *
The unique dynamic link between a database of requirements and Word documents provides
quick access to the contextual information (in Word documents) about requirements, while still
providing the powerful analytical skills of a database.

Go back to the Rational RequisitePro Explorer (by clicking the icon.)

At the top of the Explorer, right-click the “Learning Project – Use Cases” project; choose
"New" then "Package".
In the "Package Properties" dialog box, type "My New Package" in the name field and
click "OK". Your new package is added to the Explorer.

* Key Benefit *
With IBM Rational RequisitePro you have complete freedom on how you want to organize
requirements (and documents and views). User-definable packages provide an easy and flexible
way of organizing your requirement artifacts. This flexibility allows users to quickly access the
requirements that most interest them, which helps team members work more efficiently.

5. Create a new requirement without a document

With “My New Package” highlighted, right click and select "New", “Requirement”. The
"Requirement Properties: pending" dialog box appears.
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Select “FEAT: feature” in the “Type” field.

Type "My new requirement" in the "Name" field.
Type "The text of my new requirement" in the "Text" field.
Click the "Attributes" tab and set the “Type” to “Functional” and the "Difficulty" to
"Low".
Click "OK".

Notice your new requirement (FEAT17) is added to the “My New Package” you created above.

In the “Features and Vision” package, double-click the “All Features” view.
Rational RequisitePro views display results of database queries. This particular view displays
all product features currently stored in the RequisitePro project database.
For a better view, drag the divider line between the explorer and the view
Scroll down to the bottom of the view. The two requirements you created earlier
(FEAT16 and FEAT17) appear at the bottom of the view.
Right-click on the row displaying FEAT17 and choose “Select in Explorer”.
From the requirements explorer, drag FEAT17 onto the "Features and Vision" package
icon .

You have just created a new requirement that does not have a Word document context. FEAT17
is only stored in the database. Customers who prefer not to work in Microsoft Word® have the
option of entering requirements directly into the database, and generating requirements reports
by exporting views to Microsoft Word®..

* Key Benefit *
Being able to work directly in a Microsoft Word® document or in the IBM Rational RequisitePro
database views adds flexibility, allowing team members to work in an environment in which they
are comfortable. This encourages greater tool usage and greater efficiency.

6. View Requirements History

Pull down the “Edit” menu and select “Find”

Enter “Response” (without the “”) as the text and click “Find Next”. The requirement
"SUPP7: Response Time” is located in the Explorer.
Click “Close” in the “Find” dialog.
Right-click on the “SUPP7” requirement and select "Properties".
Click the "Revision" tab. Information about the last change made to that requirement is
displayed.
Click the "History" button.
The "Revision History" dialog box appears. You can see the history of each version of
the requirement, including who made the change and when they made it. As you click
each version line, the “Change description” and “Requirement text” field update with the
information pertinent to that requirement version.
Click “Close” on the “Revision History” dialog box and “OK” on the “Requirement
Properties” dialog box.

Requirement history provides visibility into the evolution of each requirement and provides an
indication of how stable each requirement is.
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* Key Benefit *
Having access to the audit trail of each requirement provides a sense of how often requirements
change, and minimizes unnecessary changes. Recording the who, when, what and why of every
requirement change facilitates understanding of the project evolution.

7. View requirements priority by sorting and querying

The "All Features" view should be active in the right-hand pane and displaying all the product
features and their corresponding attributes.

Left click twice in the "Priority" column of any visible requirement. A drop down list box
appears and allows you to choose a new value for priority. Change the priority value
and click away to commit that change to the database.
Right-click the heading of the "Priority" column and choose "Sort Descending". The list
of feature requirements will be reordered in descending order of priority.

Next you will create a view to more finely tune the prioritization filter.

Right-click the "Features and Vision" package in the Explorer and choose "New”, "View".
The "View Properties" dialog box appears.
Enter "Must Have Features" in the “Name” field.
Leave the “Attribute Matrix” view type default.
Select “FEAT:feature” for the “Row Requirement Type” field.
Click the "Query…" button.
In the "Select Attribute" dialog box, select "Priority" and then click "OK". The "Query
Requirements" dialog box appears.
In the “Select to Display” zone, click "None", choose "Must" in the list, and click "OK".
The query you created above is displayed in the "Query Row Requirements" dialog box.
Click the “Add” button and choose "Difficulty" in the "Select Attribute" dialog box; click
"OK". Next, click the "None" button and then choose "Low" from the list and click "OK".
The “Query Row Requirements” dialog box now displays both queries. Click "OK". In the
“View Properties” dialog box, click “OK”. Product features matching the query criteria
(FEAT1) are displayed in the view area.
Right click on the “Must Have Features” view in the Explorer and select “Save View” to
reapply this query later.

You have now created a query that finds all product features that have a Must priority and a
Low difficulty. As new requirements are created in IBM Rational RequisitePro, this view will
always display the set of requirements matching that criterion.

* Key Benefit *
The intuitive sorting and querying interface makes it easy to show which requirements are most
important. Prioritization of requirements ensures that the most important things get built first.
Views can be saved so that the query is always available and easy to run. Being able to
determine which requirements make more business sense to implement for each release
ultimately leads to improved customer satisfaction.

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8. View Requirements Coverage

"Coverage" refers to the idea that each high level requirement should have lower level
requirements associated with it in order to ensure that developers actually build all agreed upon
high-level functionality.

Right-click the "My New Package" package and choose "New", "View…".
The “View Properties” dialog box appears. In the “Name” field, type "Features to Use
Cases".
For View Type, select “Traceability Matrix”. For “Row Requirement Type”, select “FEAT:
Feature”. For “Column Requirement Type”, select “UC: Use Case”. Click “OK”.

The new view is added to the Explorer and displayed on the right.

For a better view, drag the divider line between the explorer and the view
From the menu, select View> Collapse All and drag the UC column header divider lines
between UC requirements to increase the column widths.
Right-click on the view in the explorer and select Save View.

Traceability links are shown as blue arrows indicating relationships between product features and
use cases, indicating that a use case is fulfilling a specific product feature.

From the Rational RequisitePro toolbar, click the “Query row requirements” icon .
In the “Select Attribute” dialog, scroll down and select “Trace-from”. Click “OK”.
Select “UC Use Case” and the “Not Traced” radio button. Click “OK”.
Click Add…. Select ‘Status’. Click OK. Click ‘None’. Select ‘Incorporated’. Click OK twice.
In the view, drag row and column dividers for better viewing.
From the menu, select File>Save View As… and enter “Features not Traced to Use
Cases”. Click OK.
The resulting view only shows product features that are not linked to use cases, which provides a
sense of how much work is left to do on the project, as features incorporated in a release should
be elaborated in use cases to actually be implemented in the software being developed. You just
saw how to filter a traceability matrix, but notice that a similar view was already provided in the
“Coverage Analysis” package, included in all the provided project templates.

* Key Benefit *
Coverage analysis ensures nothing gets left out of a release by mistake. The intuitive querying
mechanism in IBM Rational RequisitePro allows you to create requirement coverage reports.
Saved views speed access to those reports.

9. See the impact of changing requirements

You will modify a requirement and see what impact the change has on other requirements.

Under the “My New Package” package, double-click the "Features to Use Cases" view.
Notice the blue traceability link between FEAT4 and UC2
Right-click "FEAT4: Ability to check status…” in the row and select "Properties…".
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Click the "General" tab.

Change the "Text" to "Ability to check the status of customer-specific orders.” and
click "OK".
Notice the requirement text is immediately updated in the Vision document where this feature is
displayed and a red line is now slashing the traceability link between "FEAT4" with "UC2". This
red line indicates a "suspect link" and is a warning that the change in the feature could affect the
requirement specified in the use case. This same behavior occurs when you open the Word
document to change the requirement text.

* Key Benefit *
IBM Rational RequisitePro lets users modify the text of requirements identified in Word
documents without requiring users to open the document. Next time the document is open,
changes made directly in the views are reflected in the document.

Expand the “Impact Analysis” package in the explorer and double-click the “Use Cases
Impacted by Feature Changes” view, which stores the query you created manually in
the above steps.

All project templates from which new projects are created includes impact analysis views to
eliminate the need to re-create them in each project.

* Key Benefit *
Suspect links in IBM Rational RequisitePro are your notification that some requirements may need
to be updated because other requirements have changed. Understanding the impact of a change
can mean the difference between the project being delivered on time or being late. This type of
analysis is very difficult without the ability to do sophisticated queries.
To speed access to suspect links, IBM Rational RequisitePro provides predefined impact analysis
views.

Congratulations! You have completed the Rational RequisitePro “Test Drive”.

Feel free to browse through the product further or close the application.

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Section 3 – IBM Rational RequisiteWeb

IBM Rational RequisitePro provides you with two interfaces: the standard Windows GUI you used
in the Test Drive and the Rational RequisiteWeb® Web-based interface. Rational RequisiteWeb is
the interface of choice to access the Rational RequisitePro project from a location remote to the
project database.

Rational RequisiteWeb gives you complete access to requirements. Through your Web browser,
and without installing any client software, you can create, modify, query, and sort requirements.
You may also create new documents, view existing documents, modify traceability relationships
and attributes, query and sort requirements, create and save views. If you have access to MS
Word, you can also take documents offline to edit them and bring them back online for others to
view your changes.

Rational RequisiteWeb is included with every floating license of Rational RequisitePro. Because it
requires setting up a Web server, which may be more than you are ready to do now, we are
providing a self-running demo for you to experience Rational RequisiteWeb. To view Rational
RequisiteWeb, click here.

* Key Benefits *
Using any standard Web browser, IBM Rational RequisiteWeb provides all the user functionality
available in IBM Rational RequisitePro, without requiring any client software installed (Word is
required to edit documents), and using a similar interface to the IBM Rational RequisitePro
interface.

Rational RequisiteWeb allows distributed teams to stay in synch. Direct Web access ensures
remote users are always seeing the most up-to-date requirements. This ensures that code is
never written to an out-of-date spec.

Conclusion
We hope this Test Drive has given you a sense of the benefits IBM Rational RequisitePro and IBM
Rational RequisiteWeb can bring to your team. Additional features not included in this Test Drive include:

• Managing requirement changes by:

o Managing requirements common to multiple projects into a externalized project
o Creating and comparing baselines, and creating new projects from baselines
o Setting up email notification of requirement changes

• Setting project security. Go to "File", "Project Administration", "Security…" and click the “Help”
button in the "Project Security" window

• Extending functionality with scripting through a COM-based extensibility interface (RPX). Scripts
available on IBM developerWorks: Rational.

• Mapping your Rational RequisitePro project structure to your requirements management process
by adding new document types, requirement types and attributes.

• Importing requirements using “File”, “Import”. The Import Wizard provides a quick way to
import existing requirements either from an existing Microsoft Word® document or from a CSV
file. Most customers adopt IBM Rational RequisitePro in the midst of their projects – the import
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facility provides a way to migrate their requirements information to IBM Rational RequisitePro.

• Engaging in discussions about the project or requirements, so that all decisions are documented
in one place as historical data and to minimize how often you revisit issues.

• Integrations with IBM Rational Rose XDE, IBM Rational Software Architect, IBM Rational
Software Modeler, IBM Rational ClearQuest, IBM Rational TestManager, IBM Rational SoDA, and
the IBM Rational Unified Process. These integrations are key to keeping a software development
team in sync (by providing access to requirements from other IBM Rational tools). White papers
and demonstrations about these integrations are available here.

IBM Rational RequisitePro provides a centralized, secure, reliable environment for capturing, storing,
organizing, tracking, and analyzing requirements. It captures user and customer needs and track changes
as they evolve to ensure that when you deliver your software, it meets users’ expectations. With IBM
Rational RequisitePro, managers have instant insight into the status of specific requirements, as well as
the ability to view overall project status and analyze trends – critical information for planning, allocating,
and prioritizing resources.

The unique architecture of IBM Rational RequisitePro, live requirements documents linked to a database,
makes it an attractive offering to any teams currently using Word to document requirements.

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