Approaches to requirements

Traditionally there have been two main approaches to requirements management that have been more or less mutually exclusive:

  • Document-centric approach — Requirements are defined in office applications like Microsoft Office Word or Excel, and engineering and QA work from copies of the requirements, which they hope are the right and most up to date copies.

  • Tool-centric approach — Requirements are defined using data-driven software tools such as DOORS, Requisite Pro, and others. Engineering and QA can manage their processes more efficiently, but the business and domain experts who author requirements often resist the adoption. Extensive training becomes necessary for these users when the tools approach is mandated.

Polarion supports both approaches, and even enables a hybrid approach where some requirements and other artifacts are document-based while others are tool-based. Document-centric workers can stay within the familiar document paradigm using LiveDoc Documents to author specifications, and marking parts of the content as requirement artifacts that they and others can track, manage, and trace throughout the life cycle.

Tip:

Artifacts that represent requirements, test cases, tasks, and others are collectively called Work Items in Polarion.

LiveDoc Documents are often referred to as Documents in help text and the Polrion user interface.

People such as developers and QA testers who are accustomed to using data-driven tools can keep within that paradigm, using integrated tracker, workflow, and project planning and management features to work efficiently — even when artifacts like requirements live in Documents.

Polarion also makes possible a unique hybrid approach. For example, requirements, test cases, or other artifacts written up in Documents automatically create data in the background, which is accessible in tools and reports. Stakeholders can access their preferred presentation — Document or tools. It's quite easy to switch between these presentations.

Features to explore

  • Definitely have a look at Documents. Within that topic, learn about the Word Import feature that lets you leverage existing assets authored in Microsoft Word, and the Word Round-trip feature that enables you to collaborate with external people who use Word, or work on your Documents offline and synchronize your changes with the portal.