(Hint: Don’t miss the video included toward the end of this entry)

Back in 2000, there was an American movie called Pay it Forward. The plot involved an 11-year-old boy who, in response to a school assignment to put into action a plan that would change the world, devised a plan he called “paying it forward.” This plan was based on good deeds rather than profit, and involved one person doing a favor for another, while the recipient of the favor then paid it forward to another person. Favor built upon favor, and magical events transpired until the movie ended with a vision of hundreds of people who participated in the world-changing school project.

With our integrations for Collaborative Lifecycle Management, team members can link to each others’ artifacts. Link builds upon link and before you know it, magical events transpire with the system automatically inferring traceability links. If you’re looking to become more agile, or if your looking to be lean, look into how this simple act of communication across team members can radically do the following:

• Increase Value by collaborating with the business early and often
• Improve Quality by collaborating on the done criteria including business expectations, plan items, and test cases
• Reduce Cost with defect collaboration
• Reduce Time to Delivery through plan and sprint alignment
• Improve Predictability by using mash-up dashboards to steer each sprint

This video uses the 3.0 Beta 2 versions of Rational Team Concert and Rational Quality Manager and runs for roughly 12 minutes, which is longer than we normally produce, but we felt it important enough to show as much as we could in one video. And yes, we missed a few linking opportunities, but left some hints for you to explore. So get some popcorn and settle in.

• The demo starts with a view on a development plan that has traceability columns added to see which plan items have links to requirements and test cases. It turns out that the requirements analyst has added a new plan item to the Release backlog and it is linked to a requirement. This catches the attention of the scrum master during a sprint planning meeting.
• The plan item in Team Concert is picked up by the development team, and they “link it forward” by creating a linked test case in Rational Quality Manager. In addition, tasks are created for developers and testers and linked to the plan item. Both of these simple gestures not only communicate the need for the test to the test team, but because it’s linked, enables to the team to track when the test is completed, run, and even view the result.
• The testers close the loop by linking the test case in Rational Quality Manager, back to the requirement. In addition, the tester interacts with the tasks that were created in Rational Team Concert, without having to leave the Quality Management user interface.   All team members share the same view of the plan item and its tasks, so everyone can see how much of the work is complete.
• We then fast forward into the lifecycle and test the implementation. When a defect is found, the tester “links it forward” by creating a linked defect in Rational Team Concert. By traversing the established links, the system can automatically infer additional links such as the affected test case, test plan in Quality Manager, the implementation plan item in Team Concert and the requirement in Requirements Composer.

Here’s a screen shot of a defect and all of the automatically created links.

Automated Links on a Defect

The Jazz team seeks to change the world of software development by simplifying software delivery. With our Collaborative Lifecycle Management integrations, establishing traceability links has never been easier. To learn more, visit the project page on Jazz.net, or download the milestones so you can start “linking it forward”.

Carolyn Pampino
Strategic Offerings Program Director