Productivity Award

Requirements Center 2010
Blueprint Software Systems, Inc.

One of the most important elements of any project is defining requirements. Unlike design and development, the process of managing requirements is often left to documents and spreadsheets. Requirements Center 2010 makes requirements gathering a first-class citizen.

The problem with documenting requirements by hand is that even the smallest change can have big impacts if other parts of the documentation are not updated to reflect the change. With Requirements Center 2010, updates to requirements, processes, and use cases, result in changes throughout the requirements model.

Anyone who has tried to create a business process model using hand-drawn lines and boxes will appreciate the Business Process editor. Changes to entities result in real-time updates throughout the project. Models contain references to requirements and support drill-down into any sub processes.

The Use Case editor not only lets you visually design the steps to your use case, but it also provides links back to requirements, actors, comments, and external documents. Somewhere between storyboards and finished product is a big window of vulnerability for most requirements gathering efforts. How can you tell if your requirements are valid, or meet business objectives? The Simulator feature lets you step through the use cases and observe individual steps, including user interface mockups — all without writing code.

With Requirements Center, you greatly reduce the need to spend hours creating documentation. At any time, you can export your requirements using a variety of templates, which include images and hyperlinks in an easy to read format compatible with MS Word. However, exporting documentation is not the only option. You can also export your requirements to ALM Tools such as Rational Rose, Enterprise Architect, and HP Quality Center among others.

With no shortage of features, a simple interface, and a great attention to detail, Requirements Center has earned its place as a must-have tool, which will bring greater productivity and quality to projects of all sizes.

— Jon Kurz