Enhanced Requirement Modeling

In Requirement Capturing, it is common to have a large number of Requirements collected from the end users, which can be categorized for better management. For example, we may have Requirements for validating Email address and validating password, yet they both fall into the type “User Interface Requirement” from macro perspective, or “Validation Requirement” from another perspective. No matter how Requirements are categorized, each type should have a set of type-specific attributes in order to make it unique. User Interface Requirements may require specifying validation rule, while Performance Requirements, another type of Requirement, require specifying the expected delay. With the enhancement, users can define their own Requirement types by giving a type name and defining a set of type-specific attributes.

Besides defining Requirement Type, it is also possible to present Requirements in Tabular form. This provides user with a different perspective of viewing the Requirements. User can concentrate more on the differences between Requirements by comparing their attributes’ values in table easily.

By defining a Requirement type, type-specific properties such as attributes and formatting can be set. Defined types can be reused when diagramming. To define a Requirement type:

1. Select Tools > Configure Requirements from the main menu to open the Configure Requirements dialog box.
   
   
   This shows the Configure Requirements dialog box.
   
   
   
2. In the dialog box, press Add at the left hand side of the dialog to create a Requirement type.
   
   
   
3. Specify the name in the Name: field. This created a new Requirement type.
   
   
   
4. To define type specific properties, press the Add button at the right hand side of the dialog box.
   
   
   
5. Select the type of attribute.

   Type	Description
   Text	Text based attribute which supports single lines.
   Multi-line Text	Text based attribute which supports multiple lines.
   Enumeration	Value of this kind of attribute can be selected from a list of allowed values. The allowed values can be defined by pressing Edit enumeration..., which appear only when an Enumeration attribute is selected.
   Documentation	References to the documentation of the Requirement. Only one Documentation attribute is allowed for one Requirement type.

   
   
6. To configure type specific formatting, adjust Fill, Line and Font accordingly.
   
   
   

When everything is ready, press OK to confirm editing.

After we’ve create a Requirement type, we can create Requirement with the created type. To create a Requirement in user defined type:

1. From the diagram toolbar, click on the tiny triangle next to Requirement to expand it.
   
   
   
2. This shows the user defined type(s). Click to select it.
3. Press on the diagram to create a Requirement.
   
   
   Both the attributes and formatting follow the user’s definition.

The steps above allow switching between Requirement types and create Requirement accordingly. When there is a number of defined types, it would be a nice idea to list them all. To achieve this, simply select Expand Group from the popup menu of diagram toolbar options.

Tabular view presents the Requirements with their attributes in a matrix. With this presentation, user can concentrate on the difference in values of an attribute from different Requirements, and perform editing accordingly. To show Requirements as Tabular view, right-click on Requirement Diagram and select Switch to Tabular View from the popup menu.


This shows the Tabular View.


Editing can be made directly by double-clicking on a cell. It is also possible to add new Requirements by pressing the first button in the toolbar of the view. To switch back to diagram view, press Switch to Diagram View in the toolbar.

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