IBM Software

Rational
Solution Brief
Requirements-driven
quality for agile software
delivery
Be as agile as you need to be
Highlights

Improve time to value and quality with a

ts just right process

Gain consensus and validation quickly

with ongoing stakeholder/customer
involvement and team collaboration

Respond rapidly to changes in

requirements

Test and validate continuously through-

out the development process

Quickly deliver iterations of a

consumable solution
Todays software environment is driven by the mandate to deliver value
at the speed of businesses, and an agile approach can help organiza-
tions rapidly deliver high-quality software that aligns development with
customer needs and company goals. Agile delivery is becoming wide-
spread because it works wellorganizations are nding that agile proj-
ect teams, when compared to traditional project teams, enjoy higher
success rates, deliver higher quality, have greater levels of stakeholder
satisfaction, provide better return on investment (ROI), and deliver
systems to market sooner.
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Scaling the agile development process to meet
the needs of your team or company
Traditional agile teams are ones that are typically smaller and co-
located, perhaps with just 10-15 members total. But what if your team
doesnt look like this? Can you still employ agile methods? What do
you do when the group is larger with 75, 100, or more members spread
out across the globe? How do you keep the communication and the
artifacts synchronized and enable the business owners and the delivery
team to make informed decisions? What if your existing organization
structure and culture reects waterfall values, increasing the complexity
of adopting and scaling agile strategies within your organization?
Requirements-driven quality solutions
help reduce ambiguity and rework
IBM can help. With IBM Rational requirements-driven
quality solutions, teams dealing with any number of todays
business, organization, and technical complexities can employ
an agile approach for greater success.
An agile approach can scale to support ongoing collaboration
with stakeholders on requirements in real time to help gain
consensus. Using visual and textual techniques (such as rich
text, use cases and sketches), teams can align requirements
with business processes and objectives, and focus on validat-
ing business goals. As change occurs throughout the delivery
life cycle, full traceability enables impact analyses for rapid
critical decision support and risk mitigation. This ability to
collaboratively capture the needs of the business, along with
visualizing and validating requirements before committing
additional project resources, can help your organization avoid
the pitfalls that so often lead to project failures.
Integrated process, tooling, and metrics
to enhance agile software delivery
A requirements-driven quality solution can help agile delivery
teams operate with just enough process and tooling to
deliver software in less time, with less risk and higher quality
by using integrated workows that foster clarity of require-
ments and speed defect time-to-resolution. IBM Rational
Requirements Composer and IBM Rational Quality
Management software, in combination with Rational Team
Concert software, can help accelerate the core workows
that integrate and automate developing, building and validat-
ing software.

Aid consistent team collaboration, rapid response to

change, ongoing customer involvement and delivery of
working software.

Automate processes and repetitive tasks where it makes

sense to improve team efficiency.

Integrated workows manage change and help appropriate

levels of traceability between requirements, build and test
artifacts.

Provide constant access to ltered, prioritized quality met-

rics for fact-based, informed decision making.
IBM Software Solution Brief
Rational
Compliance requirement
Agile
Development
Low risk
Co-located
Minimal Significant
In-house
Informal Formal
Third party
Global
Project
focus
Under 10
developers
100s of
developers
Simple,
single platform
Complex,
multi-platform
Enterprise
focus
Critical,
Audited
Enterprise discipline
Geographical distribution
Application complexity
Team size Degree of Governance
Organization distribution
(outsourcing, partnerships)
Entrenched process,
people, and policy
Figure 1: Become more agile at scale: Scaling factors require more discipline and communication
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With IBMRational solutions, organizations get the technol-
ogy, best practices, and industry expertise to succeed in an
agile environmentregardless of their level of complexity.
Our products

IBM Rational Requirements Composer software

provides agile teams with an easy to use, collaborative
method for dening and using requirements effectively
across the project life cycle.

IBM Rational Team Concert softwaregives agile

teams a development environment that enables innovation
through collaboration.

IBM Rational Quality Manager softwareprovides

agile teams a collaborative test management environment to
reduce risk and ensure functionality, reliability and per-
formance in development and production.
Figure 2: Align development and test activities with customer value
IBM Software Solution Brief
Rational
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Analyst Developer Quality Professional
Analysts dene and
validate scenarios;
analyze and organize
requirements.
Developers and Quality
Professionals can link to
associated requirements,
sketches or storyboards.
Quality Professional
captures test execution
results and logs defect
as a work-item.
Developers see defect in
their To Do list, and can
link to detailed defect
information.
Please Recycle
For more information
To learn more about IBM Rational requirements-driven
quality solutions for agile software delivery teams, contact
your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit:
ibm.com/software/rational/agile/solutions
Additionally, nancing solutions from IBMGlobal Financing
can enable effective cash management, protection from tech-
nology obsolescence, improved total cost of ownership and
return on investment. Also, our Global Asset Recovery
Services help address environmental concerns with new,
more energy-efficient solutions. For more information on
IBMGlobal Financing, visit: ibm.com/nancing
Copyright IBMCorporation 2010
IBMCorporation
Software Group
Route 100
Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A.
Produced in the United States of America
June 2010
All Rights Reserved
IBM, the IBMlogo, ibm.com, Rational and Team Concert are
trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines
Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and
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Other product, company or service names may be trademarks or service
marks of others.
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Dr. Dobbs Journals 2008 Project Success Survey -
www.ambysoft.com/surveys/success2008.html
RAS14054-USEN-00