Dr. Dobb's | Requirements Lifecycle Accleration

Requirements Lifecycle Accleration

Accelerating project timelines

May 21, 2007
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/requirements-lifecycle-accleration/199601955

DDJ: With us is Matt Morgan, chief marketing officer for Blueprint Systems. Matt, it seems that most IT projects are always late. Is this true, and if so, how come?

MM: It is hard to believe that in the year 2007, IT departments still have major issues and delays on the majority of projects. The most recent Standish, Gartner, and Forrester reports tell us that 50 percent of project costs are dedicated to rework, and over 60 percent of projects still fail to meet business objectives. This is despite the fact that IT has spent billions on development, testing, and project management technologies.

Fundamentally, the problem isn't the talent of the development organization or the lack of modern software design and testing tools, its misunderstanding business needs. Modern development and testing tools are built to be "blank slates", where the technical users of dev and testing tools create business applications that meet business needs. Its understanding what the true business needs are that is so challenging.

If you had to boil it down, IT methodologies and platforms have matured so teams "do things right", the problem comes into play when they spend too much time and money "doing the wrong things" (ie: not meeting business requirements in the first place.) This is where all this rework timelines come from.

DDJ: Do emerging issues such as SOA, Web services, and Web 2.0 change things for the better or worse, in terms of project delivery?

MM: This is a huge challenge. The fundamental definition of an IT application is being re-written right before our eyes. With SOA, Web services, AJAX, and other modern inter-linked technologies, organizations are under pressure to deliver "end-to-end" applications which automate entire business processes. As a result, the requirements for these applications can be even more abstract.

10 years ago, when IT applications were based on single-stack, 2-tier client-server solutions, requirements that consisted of lists of features and functions were adequate to meet business goals. Today, to fully address the business needs with SOA, Web services, AJAX, and other modern technologies, modeling entire transactions are critical to requirements understanding.

To address this, the industry is driving a whole new paradigm, where rich requirements definitions (including end-to-end transaction models), interactive simulation, and validation are part of the requirements signoff.

To address this, our mission at Blueprint is to innovate and deliver products in a new solution category called "Requirements Lifecycle Accleration." RLA includes solutions that combine rich requirements definition, interactive simulation, and automated validation with strategic lifecycle touch-points (in enterprise development and testing environments)to accelerate project timelines.

Our Blueprint Requirements Center 2007 includes functionality that ensures that business needs are transferred to development and testing teams in terms of accurate "blueprints." This integrate into major enterprise lifecycle solutions, including HP Mercury, IBM Rational, Telelogic, and Borland.

DDJ: Another emerging trend is globalization. How does this change things?

MM: Globalization is another key driver for change. With the availability of off-shored, or outsourced development and testing resources, proving a requirements communication platform can dramatically accelerate project timelines. By placing development or testing in the hands of an outsourced provider, IT organizations are increasing the abstraction of the business needs from the outsourced development or testing team.

To address this, we provide requirements definition, simulation, and validation in a role-based solution, so developers can have a complete understanding of business needs. Our integrated suite of tools include solutions for the business analyst, developer, and tester -- all critical players in delivering business applications that meet business needs.

An example of how we can ensure teams are focused on the right things, our tester tool leverages rich requirements definition to accelerate User-Acceptance and QA Testing. By auto-generating 100 percent of the functional test cases to ensure every requirement is certified and validated, outsourced work is validated every step of the way.

DDJ: Is there a web site that readers can go to for more information on these topics?

MM: Yes, readers can go to www.blueprintsys.com.