How does Rational support Requirments Traceability to Macro and Micro Design
In Requisite Pro - we used to be able to mark up documents and create requirements. I was using this functionality to load Macro and Micro Design Documents and to mark up design elements to show traceability from Requirements to Design.
This functionality seems to have disappeared in the CLM suite of Products. Not in RRC, RTC or RQM. The only way I can see to support this traceability now is to have an attribute int he Requirement which specifies the section of the document which documents how the Requirement is supported. THis is cumbersome and is at best a weak link to support traceability.
Is there a Rational sanctioned way of supporting this functionality? Is this functionality in another product?
RRC - Modules is not the answer because it is not a proper documentation generation utility and can not support anything other that a basic format of document. Modules are a way of extracting artefacts from documents rather than building documents from artefacts.
This functionality seems to have disappeared in the CLM suite of Products. Not in RRC, RTC or RQM. The only way I can see to support this traceability now is to have an attribute int he Requirement which specifies the section of the document which documents how the Requirement is supported. THis is cumbersome and is at best a weak link to support traceability.
Is there a Rational sanctioned way of supporting this functionality? Is this functionality in another product?
RRC - Modules is not the answer because it is not a proper documentation generation utility and can not support anything other that a basic format of document. Modules are a way of extracting artefacts from documents rather than building documents from artefacts.
2 answers
I need some clarification of what you are saying. First, what are "Macro and Micro Design Documents"? Is that a tool, or are they simply documents with specific purposes - macro-level and micro-level design documents?
If the latter, then why do you say you cannot show traceability? You could import the documents into DNG (the name RRC is retired) as modules and link to the artifacts in the modules. In what way does this not provide what you want?
I don't understand what you say about DNG not being a "proper documentation generation utility and can not support anything other than a basic format of document". What exactly are you looking for that DNG does not support? I do not understand what your last sentence means at all. Modules are simply structured sets of artefacts. Are you looking for a way of producing documents in specific formats? In which case you should consider using RPE.
The way I would approach what seems to be your problem is very standard. Create requirements documents in DNG, with one artifact per requirement. Create you Macro-level design document in DNG, with one artifact per design element. Link the macro-level artifacts to requirements. Create your micro-level design document in DNG with one artifact per design element and link the micro-level elements to macro-level elements.
This is standard practice and is fully supported by DNG.
With some more clarity of what you are looking for, we could give a better answer.
If the latter, then why do you say you cannot show traceability? You could import the documents into DNG (the name RRC is retired) as modules and link to the artifacts in the modules. In what way does this not provide what you want?
I don't understand what you say about DNG not being a "proper documentation generation utility and can not support anything other than a basic format of document". What exactly are you looking for that DNG does not support? I do not understand what your last sentence means at all. Modules are simply structured sets of artefacts. Are you looking for a way of producing documents in specific formats? In which case you should consider using RPE.
The way I would approach what seems to be your problem is very standard. Create requirements documents in DNG, with one artifact per requirement. Create you Macro-level design document in DNG, with one artifact per design element. Link the macro-level artifacts to requirements. Create your micro-level design document in DNG with one artifact per design element and link the micro-level elements to macro-level elements.
This is standard practice and is fully supported by DNG.
With some more clarity of what you are looking for, we could give a better answer.
Thanks for your response Keith.
Yes - the Macro and Micro Design Documents are just documents.
I am on RRC Ver 4.01....I was thinking we'd only call it RDNG from Version 5 onwards.
You are talking about the Module Functionality. We have investigated this option briefly and found that we really need Rational Publishing Engine to generate the document format the client wants.
We are not getting traction is wanting to use that because it does not provide any MS Word type formatting functionality. To explain that comment further - this is a platform infrastructure project where our project will enhance existing capability. Part of this work involves updating existing documentation.
It would work very well if we had the old Requisite Pro functionality of loading a document as it and adding our requirement elements in the document,etc. We want to load up the existing document (without having extracting requirements from it.) Add to it - with design elements elicited from our enhanced project and trace only these items to requirements .
We are dealing with a handful of 90-120 page documents - which we need to add to. It does not seem practical to have to reverse engineer these into individual design elements before we can add to it BUT the major consideration is that Module functionality in RRC does not support Client document formatting standards.
Yes - the Macro and Micro Design Documents are just documents.
I am on RRC Ver 4.01....I was thinking we'd only call it RDNG from Version 5 onwards.
You are talking about the Module Functionality. We have investigated this option briefly and found that we really need Rational Publishing Engine to generate the document format the client wants.
We are not getting traction is wanting to use that because it does not provide any MS Word type formatting functionality. To explain that comment further - this is a platform infrastructure project where our project will enhance existing capability. Part of this work involves updating existing documentation.
It would work very well if we had the old Requisite Pro functionality of loading a document as it and adding our requirement elements in the document,etc. We want to load up the existing document (without having extracting requirements from it.) Add to it - with design elements elicited from our enhanced project and trace only these items to requirements .
We are dealing with a handful of 90-120 page documents - which we need to add to. It does not seem practical to have to reverse engineer these into individual design elements before we can add to it BUT the major consideration is that Module functionality in RRC does not support Client document formatting standards.
Comments
It seems your real problem is that you cannot create the documents you need from DNG using RPE. DNG is now on version 6 and offer significantly improved capability over 4.0, RPE has similarly been enhanced. I would be surprised if you cannot match the formatting requirements with the latest versions, to which you are of course entitled so long as you are on support.
I am not an RPE expert, so I don't think I have anything more to add at this point. I would tag the question as RPE, but I can't see a way to do that - maybe you can as the original author?