ALF/Requirements Management

INTRODUCTION

The Requirement Management Vocabulary focuses on the management and development of requirements. This is done during preparation of activities to achieve goals. Requirements management and development is the method to define and to refine all conceptual information detail of a target to be achieved before starting the activities to reach the target.

ASSUMPTION

Requirements management is the process to elicit, manage and develop requirements. It is not responsible for the context the requirements are used in. While requirements themselves always are raised against a target to be reached, the requirements managements goal is to assure that the requirements raised are complete and accurate and in its overall unity without conflicts.

OBJECTS

Requirement

A requirement consists of a set of Attributes. The requirement itself also includes the complete history of the changes of these attributes from the creation of the requirement until its deletion.

Version of a Requirement

The version of a Requirement is the set the of the Attributes of the requirement at a point of time. A version always belongs to a requirement.

Every version has a time interval of validity. All versions of a requirement create a non-overlapping in time sequence.

Usually one or more attributes of two versions are different. Everytime an attribute was changed a new version will be created.

Current Version

The Current Version of the requirement is the last Version of the Requirement. It is actually valid and it's validity did not end yet.

History of a Requirement

The line in time of all Versions of a Requirement is the requirement's history.

Attribute

Every Requirement consists of attributes that describe the properties of the requirement. All versions of one requirement have the same attributes. But usually the content of at least one attribute is different for two Versions of a Requirement.

The single attributes of a requirement can be of different type (e.g. Text, Numeric, . A requirement can contain a file attachement as attribute, too.

Type of Requirement

Every requirement has a certain type. The Type of the Requirement describes, what kind of information is stored in those requirements. Requirements of different types usually have different sets of Attributes. Requirements of the same type have the same Attributes.

Impact

In requirements management the impacts of information on each other are managed, too. The meaning of one requirement impacting another requirement means that by change of at least of one of the Attributes of the first Requirement one or more Attribute of the second Requirement may change. The impact from one requirement to another has to be set explicitely.

Link

A link is a directed relationship between two Versions of Requirements. It refers to the Impact that was defined between the Requirements at the time the link was created. Links can exist only between versions of requirements that exist at the same time.

Change Proposal

The Change Proposal contains a set of Attributes for a requirement. It always refers to a Version of the Requirement, that the proposing application suggests to change. The acceptance of a Change Proposal creates a new Current Version that then is part of the history of the requirement.

Comment

Comments are common remarks to a Version of a Requirement. Any requirement can be commented with a random number of comments. Comments are added to Versions of Requirements.

EVENTS

Events are information about activities within the RM tool emitted to the ALF.

New version of a requirement was created

An event has to be emitted to the ALF whenever a new Version of a Requirement was created. The event has to transport all the information needed to determine the web service flow started by the event. e.g. - Type of requirement - Identifier of the requirement - Existing attributes' names - Attributes' contents If the Requirement existed already (other versions of the requirement exist already) this event can also be viewes as a change of a Requirement. It there was no previous version this action equals the creation of a new Requirement.

Requirement was deleted

The ALF has to be informed if a Requirement was finally deleted. If a requirement is deleted it's versions still remain in the pool of managed requirements. The validity of the current version ends at deletion time and no newer version can be created. All impacts from and to the requirement end at that time and new impacts cannot be defined.

Link was created

A new link will be created within the RM application whenever an Impact is defined. While an impact is defined between two requirements a Link will be created from the Current Version of the impacting requirement to the Current Version of the impacted requirement. Also, everytime a new version of a requirement was created, that actually has an impact to another requirement, a new link will be created from that new version to the current version of the other requirement. If there are requirements, that impact the requirement with the new version, then links have to be created from the current versions of the impacting requirements to the newly version of the impacted requirement.

Delete link

Every time an impact between two requirements ends the actually existing link between the Versions of the Requirements will be deleted.

Comment was added

ALF has to be informed, if a Comment was added to a Version of a Requirement.

Change Proposal was raised

The ALF has to get the information if a Change Proposal was added to a Version of a Requirement.

Change Proposal was accepted

If a Change Proposal was accepted a new Version of the Requirement will be created. Though the ALF will be informed about that event anyway an information has to be given if this happened through the acceptance of a proposal to eventually react to the application that raised the Change Proposal.

Change Proposal was rejected

If a Change Proposal was rejected the ALF has to be informed to react to the application that raised the proposal.

SERVICES

The service can be used by the ALF to respond to other applications events or requests.

Create new requirement

To create a new requirement into the pool of managed requirements means to create the first versions of the requirement.

Change requirements current versions content

To change a requirement means to change at least one of the attributes of the requirement. The validity of the version of that requirement ends and a new version for the requirement will be created with the attributes requested. It will become the current version. The web service has to create links from the current version to the current versions of all requirements to which an impact is defined from the actual requirement. It also has to create links to the newly created current version from the actual versions of all requirements which have impacts defined on the actual requirement.

Delete requirement

A requirement may be deleted because it is not valid any more. So its validity ends at the time of the delition.

Propose change against the current version of a requirement

A new version of a requirement will be created either as the first of a (historical) line of requirements or as the next version of a requirement. This version will be marked as proposed. If the proposal is not against an existing requirement the type of the requirement has to be given.

Comment requirement

A comment will be added to the requirement.

Set impact

This means to define the impact from one requirement to another requirement. A link between the current version of the first requirement and the current version of the second requirement will be created.

Delete impact

The impact of two defined requirement may be deleted because one of the requirements changed in a way, that they don't impact each other any more. The source and the target requirement have to be given and the impact between them will be deleted, if exists. The link between the current versions of the requirements, that impact is deleted, will be deleted, too.