IBM Rational DOORS - should I deploy it myself, or is there something more appropriate?

Question

I'm inheriting a project that has, until now, had all its artifacts maintained in CVS and FogBugz. There's a ton of old and new documentation in MS Office format that needs to be reconciled.

I've seen some presentations on IBM Rational DOORS and think it would solve the lack of traceability across all these different documents and systems. My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that I could, for example, highlight a phrase in a Word document and mark that as a requirement, then create bi-directional links between that phrase and other artifacts, such as tasks in a bug-tracking system or entries in the changelog and user guide, to show that the requirement has been satisfied.

Unfortunately, if I want to use DOORS, I would probably have to install and maintain it myself. I found an open-source product for requirements management called rmtoo, but it looks like it would require me to rewrite all the documents document into a bunch of specially-formatted text files--which, for me, defeats the whole purpose. If DOORs is overkill, are there any low-overhead alternatives to DOORS?

Answer 1

Do I understand correctly that you're trying to trace elements in DOORS, Word, Tracker-entry, etc.? I don't think what you saw is possible with DOORS out of the box. I think you need a tool like agosense for that, and tons of customization for adapters to the tools you need. If you really want to know, I'd talk to an IBM Sales Rep. But a DOORS-based solution will be really expensive.

It's unclear from your description how much control you have over the tool chain. If you have full control and are looking for a cheap solution, you may want to check out something like Trac. It's free and integrates bug tracking and Wiki (so essentially, for this to work you'd have to migrate your documentation from Office to the Wiki, and bugs from FogBugz to Trac - not sure whether your users will accept this, and it creates the same problem that rmtoo does).

Last, you could look into Requisite Pro, an IBM product that is cheaper than DOORS. It has the advantage that your requirements are managed directly in Word.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

DOORS has bidirectional links, but they are only from "DOORS objects" in a "DOORS module" to another "DOORS object" in the same or another "DOORS module".

A DOORS object is a little like a row in a spreadsheet file, and a DOORS module is a little like a spreadsheet file.

You have to import all of your material into DOORS to work with it -- DOORS can't work with documents or generally communicate with the outside world very well. Importing and exporting Word documents into DOORS is incredibly breaky.

DOORS is really dated and limited.

Answer 3

If DOORs is overkill, are there any low-overhead alternatives to DOORS?

From experience, there are easily over 20 software tools (often ALM) that support the means of 'Requirements Engineering'.

Here is a short list:

• Siemens Polarion
• Cradle by 3SL
• Perforce ALM
• Jama
• Intland

...and further IBM DOORS NG "Next Gen", SAP, MKS/PTC Integrity with RE Addon, etc.

As for architecture, I'd recommend EA, Rhapsody, NoMagic, Visual Paradigm.

We have also project that manage requirements with Confluence. Apparently Gitlab is planning a RE feature.

DOORS is still in actively in use depending on your industry. And there is good reason why.