Tools change rapidly, so both vendors' claims and independent comments may be outdated.
OverviewThe market for Requirement Management (RM) tools looks heavily over-saturated, but new players still constantly enter: all the more remarkable given globally difficult trading conditions. Needless to say, other players quietly vanish from the market. However, free trials do seem to be becoming universal for new tools, and prices for web-based software are falling. There is a widening gap between the heavyweight, closed environment, local database, all-under-one-roof traditional RM tools, and the lighter, cheaper, web-based tools offering free integrations with other software (including sometimes the old RM tools). TrendsCheapLow-cost, free trial, academic/prototype, single/few user, or simply free tools are steadily coming on to the market. Each one chips away at the market perception that a pricey system which ties you into one supplier is necessary. Tools making this trend include ARM, Axiom, Banana Scrum, DESIRe, Avenqo PEP, iRise, jUCMNav, LiteRM, OneDesk, OnTime, QPack, ReqT, RMtoo, Scrumwise, SEEC, TeamPulse, TigerPro, TrackStudio. Others are constantly appearing. HandheldIn the long-term trend away from the massively-centralized, ivory-tower model of IT, pundits have long predicted the use of minimal, hand-held or wearable (Star Trek-like) client devices for every purpose. Researchers have experimented with mobile phone apps, and industry is moving in the same direction - already nearly all new RM tools are available Online. Tools making this trend include OnTime with its iPhone server. On-Demand, OnlineRequirements tools are becoming simple to install, needing no system administration, and much cheaper, at least up front. This is achieved by keeping the data online, accessed by a browser application (just as Google is doing for ordinary office software). Of course this also enables more mobile access. Tools making this trend include Accompa, Jama Contour, ReQtest and TopTeam Analyst. Open Source, Open DataBack in 2001 at the RE conference I found myself (by surprise) on a Future of RM Tools panel. I predicted that tools would move from the large, costly, monolithic, closed model towards a more open world where third-party tools could process RM data, e.g. for analysis, graphing, code generation or test planning. It has taken a long time, but finally in 2011 there appeared RM tools that are small, cheap or free, with open data, or even open source code. Tools making this trend include RMtoo (open source, open data), and in a very different way DOORS (open data exchange with RIF, an industry-standard XML format for requirements). Agile RequirementsNew tools are marketed as Agile Project Management Tools, blurring the distinction between controlling the project through requirements and managing the project - never a terribly easy distinction to maintain, really. While a year or two ago, agile tools avoided all mention of the R-word, now they are happy to say that they capture and track requirements - only in a new, agile way. Tools making this trend include Banana Scrum, OnTime, RequirementPro, Scrumwise and TeamPulse. Yesterday's FashionThe fad for Use Cases seems to have passed. Scenarios are still widely used in both traditional methods (as Concepts of Operations, or just 'Scenarios') and Agile (as User Stories) but these don't resemble Use Cases either in structure or in how they're applied. Niche SpecialisationVendors are creating (mainly web-based) tools marketed to specific vertical markets (eg automotive), to specific ways of working (eg agile software development, product management), or to specific environments (eg industry regulation). Tools making this trend include Aligned Elements and Pixref. QPack bets each way, being available in both general and medical variants. Not Calling it "Requirements" at allVendors may not even agree they are doing requirements: Agile in various forms -- Scrum, Extreme Programming, Test-Driven Development -- is supported by a widening range of software development and project management tools. Tools making this trend include Banana Scrum, MockupScreens, Rally and VersionOne. IntegrationTools try to integrate with existing documentation, e.g. by processing Microsoft Office files, rather than demanding that requirements be imported into a closed database. Tools making this trend include VisibleThread. |
Accept 360° Accompa Arcway Cockpit Avenqo PEP Axiom Blueprint Caliber CaseSpec Cognition Cockpit Contour Core Cradle DevSpec Dimensions RM Dolphin DOORS DXL_Editor FeaturePlan Focal Point GatherSpace G-Marc inteGREAT iRise jUCMNav Leap SE LiteRM MKS Integrity Objectiver OnTime OneDesk Pace Polarion PTESY QPack RaQuest Raven ReMa ReqT ReQtest RequisitePro RequirementOne Requirements Requirements Management Database RequirementPro ReqView RESDES Rhapsody RMtoo Rommana SpiraTeam Teamcenter TopTeam Analyst Tormigo TrackStudio Visure Yonix
Agility Agile Cycle Agilo for Scrum Banana Scrum MockupScreens Rally RequirementPro RMtoo Scrumwise TeamPulse VersionOne
Aligned Elements (for Medical Devices) Pixref (for Automotive) QPack (Medical version)
ARM DESIRe LEXIOR Pixref QuARS Raven RequirementsAssistant RQA SAT Smartcheck Statestep TigerPro Verification Studio VisibleThread
Accompa Avenqo PEP Banana Scrum CaseComplete Cradle GatherSpace inteGREAT Justinmind Prototyper MockupScreens OnTime Rommana Scrumwise Statestep TopTeam Analyst VersionOne VisibleThread Workspace
ARM Axiom Banana Scrum (individual) DESIRe Avenqo PEP DXL Editor (for DOORS) FeatureSet (4 users) iRise jUCMNav OnTime (1 user) QPack (5 users) ReqT (open source) RMtoo (open source) SEEC TeamPulse (community) TigerPro TrackStudio (5 users)
Raj Patel of Accompa writes:
"Accompa is an affordable, web-based requirement tool that enables product managers and project managers to capture, track and manage requirements. It can be customized right from the web-interface to fit an organization's needs. It features extensive collaboration features such as integrated discussion boards and social tags. A 30-day free trial is available."
Marion Eickmann of Agile42 writes:
"Even if Agilo is not a pure requirements tool, we strongly connect the Scrum ideas with requirements engineering."
Karl Johan Larsson of Aligned writes:
"Aligned Elements is a requirement management solution targeted towards the Medical Device industry and is essentially built to manage Design History Files. Aligned Elements incorporate all relevant parts of the DHF Management process such as specifications, test cases, FMEA risk analysis, structured reviews, trace analysis, validation checks and is controlled by FDA QSR 21 CFR Part 11 user management etc."
Peter Aschenbrenner of Arcway AG writes:
"ARCWAY Cockpit is a tool for managing requirements. It supports ARCWAY’s concept of visual requirements engineering (VRE). In VRE requirements are linked to visual high-level models of the system under design. Requirements specified in ARCWAY Cockpit can be imported from and exported to MS Excel. A fully customizable MS Word, HTML and Docbook report interfaces allows for ad-hoc reports of specific requirements or complete specification documents."
Edna Cheung of Blueprint writes:
"Blueprint provides the most comprehensive requirements management tool to define and manage software requirements that drastically improve software quality and accelerate project delivery. Define requirements using integrated text and graphical formats, validate using generated documents and live simulation, and communicate baselined requirements and automatically generated tests via developer and tester tool integrations. Integrated glossaries, business processes, rich text, use cases, user interface mockups, and data definitions foster clear requirements for true stakeholder validation. Visual requirements traceability and flexible views and reports enable efficient impact and coverage analysis. A central requirements repository with security, versioning, history, and baselines supports distributed teams."
Chip Carey of Starbase (a former owner of Caliber) wrote:
"The exciting thing about RM and Caliber in particular is that it brings all departments together within the software development lifecycle and puts them all on the same page - it provides a mechanism for communication and collaboration and effectively provides a synergy where before they were perhaps separate efforts and maybe counter-productive."
Kris of Goda Software, Inc writes:
"Analyst Pro is an affordable, scalable and collaborative tool for requirements tracking, traceability analysis and document management. It is easily deployable and customizable to your project needs."
Mitch Hayes of Cognition Corporation writes:
"Cognition Cockpit is an intuitive web-based application that facilitates your Product Development Process (PDP), enabling teams to dynamically manage customer inputs and voices, features and requirements, risks, costs, and critical parameters. Cockpit’s approach uses the best practices from systems engineering and requirements management, together with simple yet powerful collaboration to weave together critical steps in your PDP for traceability, analysis, and reporting."
Mark Walker of 3SL writes:
Cradle can deliver unlimited requirements and systems modelling scalability to the desktop through web and non-web methods that allow capture and parsing of requirements and their traceability through every part of all C4ISR, ISO, DoD and INCOSE recommended processes.
Fred Jabbour of TechExcel writes:
DevSpec is a requirements management solution that is designed to provide visibility, traceability and validation of your requirements. It allows teams to collaborate as they define and manage requirements, specifications, stories, and other artifacts. While users enjoy a simple editing view, there is a highly configurable process engine behind every action they perform. This gives DevSpec the ability to enforce a workflow, manage security roles, and track custom attributes for each item.
Dolphin from Street Light Software, Inc.
Further options include DoorsNet which allows controlled interaction over the Internet, and the Change Proposal System which automates the requirement review cycle. There are live interfaces to many CASE tools, and the promise of tight integration with the Tau toolkit for specification, design, and testing based on UML and the SDT approach to real-time systems development centred on telecommunications. DOORS use is therefore moving towards integrated project support. The web-based Focal Point is also in the IBM stable.
Gabriela Zornoza writes:
Our tools are the best choice when you have complex projects, hierarchies of information, and it is critical to conform to customer requirements and standards. This is because we offer the best traceability – which makes the difference between our products and the rest. Ours is the best way to see information links between documents. Traceability is the key to doing requirements: where they come from, where they go. Our tools are easy to learn and to manage: DOORS for requireme ntsr a complete integrated solution for upper level requirement down to lines-of-code traceability.
Darren Levy writes:
1) Gatherspace is totally online, no software to download
2) Designed and coded by analysts and project managers who fully understand the process of gathering requirements
3) With an intuitive GUI, Gatherspace also provides a to do list of "what's next" to create in addition to defining analyst based terms.
Brian Smith of Leap Systems writes:
"By translating English into logical models for software development, Leap SE achieves RAD from the source, dramatically shortening the systems analysis phase for software projects."
David Gelperin of ClearSpecs Enterprises writes:
"LiteRM changes the game from 'easy or capable' to 'easy and capable'.
LiteRM is as easy as MS Word and as capable as the heavyweight RMs (almost)."
David Martin of MKS writes:
"the clear connection between requirements, development activity and development artefacts delivers an unprecedented level of auditability, something every IT organization must demonstrate for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance."
Nicolas Ducourthial of Cediti writes:
"Key advantages of Objectiver are:
- it enables analysts to elicit and specify requirements in a systematic way,
- it produces well structured, self-contained, motivated, easily understandable, standard requirements documents,
- it provides highly effective way to communicate about the requirements,
- it ensures traceability from requirements to goals and from high-level, coarse-grained behavioural specifications to requirements."
Kimberley Chan of OneDesk writes: OneDesk is easy-to-use web-based on-demand requirements software. It is aimed as small to enterprise-sized businesses, also incorporates customer feedback management, project portfolio management, and social business collaboration aspects such as discussion forums, blogs, chat, idea voting, and more. With these, businesses can efficiently communicate with their customers, and get their products to market quickly.
Zachary Burruel of Axosoft writes:
"With a Windows Client and Web app available, OnTime provides your company with the right local or hosted RM tool solution."
SparxSystems Japan writes:
"RaQuest is not dependent on any specific methodology for requirement management. We aim for RaQuest to be used for the processing and management of any requirements.
Moreover, the greatest feature of RaQuest at present is being closely coordinated with Enterprise Architect which is an UML modeling tool. This will enable you to refer to requirements from within Enterprise Architect, and to maintain a relationship between UML elements and requirements."
"RAVEN automatically creates activity and responsibility diagrams from plain business English text so you get immediate visual feedback on your use cases.
Once you see the errors, you can transform the unstructured English into "requirements English" that specifies the use case clearly, consistently, and completely. RAVEN helps you become a better requirements writer."
Derek Vansant of Artifact Software writes: “With Lighthouse you can collaborate and manage requirements in the context of the entire application life cycle. Lighthouse allows users to link requirements to other project artifacts, including user comments, tasks, change requests, tests cases and results, defects, issues, and more. As a result, real-time traceability reporting is completely automated. Lighthouse is available both online and on-premise and is entirely free for 1 project and five users (not just a trial). If you need more access, it is only $25 per month per user. Simply go to our web site to create your free account.”
Andreas Florath of Flonatel writes: "rmtoo gives everybody the unique chance to adapt the tools to their needs and their processes because it's open source. Often other tools force the user to change their habits or processes. With rmtoo the user has the control."
Michael Breen writes:
"As a relatively specialized tool based on creating a model of behaviour, it's a bit different to most of the tools in your list...
Anyway, one sentence could be:
'Among other things, Statestep features a unique colour-based interface which makes it feasible to deal systematically with (for example) millions of possibilities - and so to find obscure problem cases otherwise likely to be overlooked in a specification.' "
Harold Knight of SDRC (an earlier owner of Slate): Slate is fundamentally different in Systems Engineering because we manage all components of the design in true Object-Oriented fashion - not documents or paper but information, so we are a system design tool - system engineers can design and view systems from any perspective.
Konstantin Boev of Telerik writes: TeamPulse helps software teams capture, define and decompose project requirements in the best way possible by facilitating collaboration and context flow between different team members.
Leeann Berner of VersionOne writes: "VersionOne is recognized by agile practitioners as the leader in agile project management tools and gives you the most visibility into and confidence in your software development process."
Jody Bullen of Yonix writes: Yonix is unlike anything on the market. It is a powerful and richly featured stakeholder collaboration and communications platform for business analysis, described as a 'talent amplifier for Business Analysts'.
Invitation to Readers |
Invitation to Vendors |
| I am always interested to hear about any requirements management tools, templates and sites not mentioned here, and about links that are now broken as tools and companies are renamed or reorganized. | If you work for a RM vendor or
freeware site and would like to supply updated details or a short quote
for your tool or template, send it to me with your name and details of
your organization and your website.
If your tool is in the wrong category, or should be added to another category, please let me know. Text will be edited for neutrality. Quotes may be edited for length. |
© Ian Alexander 1994-2013