Delphi unites global teams for more cost-effective component reuse with Rational DOORS.

Delphi is a leading global supplier of mobile electronics and transportation systems, including powertrain, safety, steering, thermal, control and security systems, electrical/electronic architecture and in-car entertainment technologies.

Every day, millions of drivers travel the world’s highways in automobiles built with innovative systems and technologies by Delphi. Headquar­tered in Troy, MI, Delphi operates 150 wholly owned manufacturing sites in 34 countries. In addition to its flagship mobile electronics and transportation systems, Delphi technology is also found in computing, communications, consumer electronics, energy and medical applications.

Developing complex systems for the automotive industry – such as Delphi’s 2008 introduction of the first prepack­aged driver side airbag assembly in the steering wheel for the Smart Fortwo vehicle made by Daimler – demands strict adherence to customer require­ments in order to deliver high quality systems on budget and on time.

“Our key business challenge was to improve communication among our globally diverse development teams so they could be more productive when working on parallel releases with shared requirements,” said Lillian Kelly, Senior Systems Engineer at Delphi. “We needed an automated requirements management solution.”

Opening DOORS to efficient component re-use
In 1997, Delphi’s management started evaluating different requirements management solutions. During the evaluation period, Delphi completed a parallel pilot with DOORS and another requirements management tool. After running both tools for approximately one year, Delphi selected DOORS.

IBM provided on-site consulting services after Delphi completed training and implementation. Today, approximately 1,200 employees in North America, Europe and Asia use DOORS on a regular basis.

“The concept of Rational DOORS was easier for our users to grasp and the tech support personnel were excellent in helping them get up to speed,” Kelly said. “Also, the client/server installations were very straightforward, and it was a smooth implementation overall.”

On a daily basis, Delphi’s global teams use DOORS to help them automate requirements management for parallel development. Project team members can import requirements from the DOORS repository to reuse in a new project. They can set different competencies views and attribute values, as well as link the requirements and test procedures to higher level requirements. Delphi customized the DOORS graphical user interface (GUI) to consolidate multiple steps into a single GUI.

A small group of Delphi developers are also using DXL, the DOORS eXtension Language, to customize and extend the standard interface of DOORS to create additional requirements management capabilities.

Uniting global teams with Rational DOORS
Adopting Rational DOORS for requirements management has helped Delphi give all of its global teams unprecedented accessibility to requirements, making it easier to share requirements for parallel development. Because of the improved communication among global teams, Delphi’s managers now can get a quick view of the project status and costs incurred throughout the development lifecycle. They can also more easily catch “orphan requirements” and other problems earlier in the development lifecycle, thus reducing costly rework. As a result, the quality of meeting customer requirements has improved and costs can be managed more accurately.

“Rational DOORS has helped Delphi improve development team communication, resulting in meeting customer requirements faster and more accurately,” Kelly said. “Also, newer team members can be brought up to speed quickly because DOORS is user friendly.”

“Delphi plans to add other IBM Rational development tools to integrate with DOORS,” Kelly said. “We know that they will streamline seamlessly with our automated require­ments management processes in DOORS.”

For more information
To learn more about Rational DOORS software, contact your IBM representative or IBM Partner, or visit:

www.ibm.com/software/rational