Define the right solution with requirements and analysis tools that help you understand your problem space, capture and manage evolving requirements, model user interactions, define your database architecture, and incorporate stakeholder feedback throughout your project lifecycle.
Whether you're a project manager, analyst, developer, or tester, requirements and analysis impacts your work. Good requirements and analysis practices help reduce project risk and keep your project running smoothly until the final product is successfully delivered to your customer. IBM Rational requirements and analysis tools are an integral part of the IBM Software Delivery Platform, a complete and modular platform for teams who build business applications, embedded systems, and software products.
IBM Rational recognizes the many different talents required to make a project successful. Every team has a mix of roles and responsibilities working toward project success. One key role for successful software or systems development is the Analyst role. We break the Analyst role into distinct areas: Database Designer, Systems Engineer, and Business Analyst. Because teams vary, you might not use one of the specific titles below, but you might still perform this role on your team.
- Business analyst: Tasked with understanding and representing stakeholder needs, leading and coordinating the collection and verification of customer and business needs, documenting and organizing the requirements for a system, and communicating requirements to an entire team. Other titles or roles that might do these tasks are systems analysts, project mangers, program managers, or product managers. Tools: IBM Rational RequisitePro, IBM WebSphere Business Modeler, and IBM Rational Requirements Composer
- Software architect: Responsible for creating and maintaining the overall structure and layout of a software system's components and their interfaces within and outside the system. Tools: IBM Rational RequisitePro, IBM Rational Software Modeler, IBM Rational Software Architect
- Database designer: Responsible for leading the coordination and collection of database requirements, documenting, organizing, and communicating the requirements for the database, modeling the database architecture, and ensuring it supports the business needs. Examples of other titles or roles that might do these tasks are database analysts, data modelers, or data architects. Tools: IBM Rational Data Architect, IBM Rational Rose Data Modeler and IBM Rational RequisitePro
IBM offers the following products for requirements and analysis:
- IBM Rational Requirements Composer: A visual and collaborative requirements definition solution that enables organizations to enhance their requirements processes with easy-to-use elicitation and definition capabilities
- IBM Rational RequisitePro: A powerful, easy-to-use, and integrated product for requirements and use case management that promotes better communication, enhances teamwork, and reduces project risk.
- IBM Rational Software Modeler: A UML-based visual modeling and design tool for architects, systems analysts, and designers who need to ensure that their specifications, architecture, and designs are clearly defined and communicated to their stakeholders.
- IBM Rational Software Architect: A design and construction tool for software architects and senior developers creating applications for the Java platform or in C++ that leverages model-driven development with the UML and unifies all aspects of software application architecture.
- NEW! IBM Rational Data Architect: An enterprise data modeling, integration, and development tool designed to help data architects understand heterogeneous data assets and their relationships, design federated databases and streamline database projects.
- IBM Rational Rose Data Modeler: Provides the data analyst with a UML-based visual modeling tool that integrates data modeling with application modeling and system development.
- IBM WebSphere Business Modeler: Provides the business analyst with comprehensive business process modeling and collaboration capabilities to graphically design processes across people, partners, and applications.
IBM Rational also offers select requirements and analysis products as part of an overall lifecycle solution for the development of software products and systems:
- IBM Rational Professional Bundle: Includes all the desktop tools your enterprise needs to design, construct, and test J2EE/portal/service-oriented applications on both Windows and Linux and to test .NET applications. With a single purchase you can get eight powerful software tools and have just one maintenance contract to manage. The bundle provides complete flexibility for individual practitioners, who can install and use whatever tool(s) they need to do their job. Architected for ease of adoption, all tools in the bundle are installed inside an Eclipse-based application shell.
- IBM Rational Team Unifying Platform: Designed to equip your teams with the infrastructure tools, processes, and integrations they need to work together more effectively. This solution unifies your team by providing common access to development assets, communication alerts and processes to maintain project momentum and focus.