How to Evaluate the Best Requirements Management Tool?

In this article, you will learn about the significance of the requirements management tool and essential features that can help you in evaluation.

Requirements gathering has a significant impact on the entire software development lifecycle. It is required to ensure the quality of the software as the requirement document provides in-depth detail on the client’s expectations.

It states customer’s conditions and constraints on a particular product and its delivery. It also indicates the expected functionality, performance levels, and compatibility factor. It is the first and important step of the entire software development lifecycle.

Lack of clear and precise requirement analysis incur an additional cost, results in overruns, and finally a failure to deliver the expected functionality or the software quality

Software development companies always look for methods to improve the requirements analysis process to ensure consistency and successful projects.

Why do we need a requirement management tool?

• An effective tool is required to share the requirements so that each team member work towards one goal.

• Using a tool to track and update requirements also reduces redundancy and rework.

• Team members can easily access the status of each requirement and can use them.

• A useful requirements gathering tool also reduces the number of errors or bugs in the project, an entire team can review and approve items in one go.

 

• A reliable tool is considered to be one which enables you to avoid a lot of errors. It helps you to bring more consistency in the entire project.

• It also reduces the communication gap between the customers and the production team.

 

There are essential parameters to evaluate a tool from the list of a requirements management tool to shortlist the best tool. Go through each one of them.

 

Excellent Organization

 

A requirements management tool which organizes and prioritize requirements leads to accelerated results. It also helps in tracking changes in the requirements sheet which makes it more useful.

 

Customization

 

A useful software requirements management tool helps in customizing various fields as per project needs and requirements. A tool enables you to change status values and you can even add additional fields to better track the requirements’ status.

 

Intuitive views

 

Any tool which offers an intuitive view of  stored requirements in a tree-based structure improves your understanding of the requirements. You can categorize the requirements based on various inbuilt features in a bar and pie chart. It keeps the entire team updated about requirement status, date of creation, etc. The display also helps in reviewing and tracking all the changes instantly.

 

End-to-end traceability

 

You can easily track all the changes and edits made to the requirements in one single view. A good tool enables you to gain comprehensive knowledge about various changes made to the requirements. You can map requirements to test cases and bug reports to understand their dependability.

 

Reporting

 

A good tool will offer to create reports in form of pie-charts and graphs and you can export the charts to word, powerpoint to presentations. You can make requirements easier to understand by attaching the design documents, and other important information through attachments. You can even see the requirements based on their priority.

 

Flexibility

 

This tool will allow you to rank and prioritize your requirements and more flexibility in storing and accessing requirements.

 

Now you know what all features a good requirements management tool must have to make the entire software development life cycle more productive.

Author's Note

Nick has been associated with a leading software development company, in his tenure of ten years in this industry, he has advised and consulted companies on investing in the right tools to bring efficiency and productivity in the team. This time he has contributed his share of knowledge on finding the right requirements management tool.