HP Quality Center Requirements

Management module
Data sheet

HP Quality Center software’s Requirements Management

module is a comprehensive, integrated solution for
capturing, managing, and tracking requirements at
every step of the application development lifecycle.

Align your IT deliverables with

­business objectives.
The Requirements Management module is a robust,
easy-to-use solution that helps your project teams
­provide that application functionality meets business
needs. We designed this module for use by business
analysts, quality assurance (QA), and development
teams to manage and validate several different types
of requirements. Through accurate requirements and
risk-based test management, development and testing
teams can focus their efforts on high-priority business
needs and ensure that decisions to proceed are based
on quantifiable business risk.

HP Quality Center manages requirements within a

centralized repository. This allows distributed teams to
Key features and benefits
collaborate and share requirements while they m ­ anage By adding consistency and structure to your require-
multi-dimensional traceability among requirements, ments management processes, your development
tests, and defects across releases and cycles. teams can:
• Easily access requirements data through a central-
When requirements change, a change impact report
ized, Web-based repository accessible to the entire
highlights all affected requirements and notifies project
team
teams of the impact. Version control allows teams to
collaborate and share data without the risk of over­ • Review requirements coverage and application
riding each other’s work, and baselines help stake- ­quality to make better application release decisions
holders see when a project is ready to move to the next • Prioritize requirements and align testing goals
stage in the lifecycle. Real-time visibility of requirements with business priorities to enable compliance and
coverage and associated defects builds confidence in ­manage change
go/no-go decisions.
• Validate application requirements and maintain
traceability and an audit trail among requirements,
tests, and defects
Analysts report that as many as 71% of software
projects that fail do so because of poor requirements
management, making it the single biggest reason for
project failure—more than bad technology, missed
deadlines or change management fiascos.
–Christopher Lindquist, Fixing the Requirements Mess,
CIO Magazine

• Highlight interdependencies between requirements Manage requirements with native version control and
and provide change impact analysis including baselining.
change notification to affected personnel By storing the requirements in a centralized ­location
• Facilitate data integrity and team collaboration and leveraging the native versioning capabilities in
through versioning and baselining of requirements HP Quality Center, business analysts, developers,
and testers can collaborate and share data without
• Integrate data with Microsoft ® Word, Microsoft
overriding each other’s work. Baselines can also be
Excel®, and third-party requirements definition tools
­captured, including full traceability linkages, which
for complete coverage
helps you make more informed decisions about when
• Support customizable fields and flows for user- requirements are ready to be moved to the next stage
specific processes of the ­lifecycle.
• Allow real-time reporting and analysis of application
Establish requirements traceability.
readiness
In the Requirements Management module, you can
organize requirements according to parent-child trace-
How it works ability. This allows you to specify and easily identify
Capture different types of requirements. relationships between requirements.
One of the most critical roles in the requirements
management process is that of the business analyst. You can also tie requirements to functional test cases,
Business analysts act as a liaison among project stake- thus establishing a traceable link to the correspond-
holders to gather, analyze, communicate, and validate ing requirements definition. Test cases can be auto-
requirements related to new IT projects or changes to generated from requirements, which reduces the time
existing applications, processes, or policies. needed to build tests and enables the best possible
coverage. HP Quality Center also provides trace­
The Requirements Management module in HP Q ­ uality ability throughout the testing lifecycle so you can
Center provides business analysts and other key ­easily track the percentage of requirements covered
stakeholders with multiple preconfigured requirement by your tests and their pass/fail status.
types—from technical specifications to use cases.
It also supports customizable requirements types to As requirements change, an impact analysis report
­capture all levels of requirements and store them in can help you identify other requirements affected by
the centralized repository, along with any supporting the change, providing you greater visibility as well
attachments. as helping you improve your change management
processes.

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Requirements Management types

Reuse and share application requirements. Requirements Management for any type and size of
With HP Quality Center, you can store requirements enterprise
in a shared library, allowing multiple business units to If you prefer the familiar interface of Microsoft Word,
contribute to and reuse requirements assets. Require- the Requirements Management module offers a rich
ments can be reused “as is” or modified by creating text editor with the same functionality for data input as
a new version for each project. This flexibility r­educes Microsoft Word. Alternatively, you can import require-
duplication, and supports compliance requirements ments into HP Quality Center from Microsoft Word or
by mandating that specific requirements be used to Microsoft Excel, eliminating the need to re-enter exist-
enable regulatory or process compliance. ing requirements information. And because require-
ments are managed in HP Quality Center’s central
Manage user stories for your agile projects.
repository, you can also use the Requirements Man-
HP Quality Center allows you to organize require-
agement Synchronizer tool to easily import data from
ments according to release and development cycles,
many third-party solutions directly into the HP Quality
helping you support agile development projects. Agile
Center Requirements Management module.
project teams can use HP Quality Center to assign
user stories to iterations, and track the progress of a The open APIs that allow HP to build out-of-the box
project from start to completion. integrations with many of the industry-leading univer-
sal modelling language (UML) solution vendors are
Align testing priorities based on risk.
also documented and available to our customers to
No QA organization can test every requirement. HP
build custom functionality extensions and third-party
Quality Center includes risk-based quality manage-
integrations.
ment so that you can improve your testing effort based
on an objective risk assessment of each requirement.
This allows you to align your test strategies with the
most important requirements for your business.

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4AA2-3219ENW, November 2008