Requirements Authoring Tool (RAT)

Requirements management is one of the most important processes in many engineering projects. Writing new requirements is, sometimes, like facing a white paper: authors must know what structure to follow, what terms should be used, what are the measurement units agreed for the project, what are the expected quality policies or checklist to follow... RAT - Ready For Rational Software

Requirements Authoring Tool (RAT) is an assistant helping authors during the demanding process of authoring requirements. It is also the perfect assistant for System Engineers or Business Analysts while they are writing their requirements. RAT uses a set of agreed upon boilerplates and leads you, step by step, suggesting the next term of your requirement always ensuring the right grammar.

Once a boilerplate has been selected, RAT shows its structure and an example of use. The author only has to select the right terms, with the right semantics, thus ensuring that the right grammar has been followed, and that the proper information has been provided (including all the needed details).

Requirements Authoring Tool implements an IntelliSense way of writing. This technique, as experienced within the well-known © Microsoft Visual Studio, provides an accurate way of creating requirements while writing is also speeded up.

By ensuring that the right boilerplate has been met, different benefits are obtained:

The requirement includes the right pieces of information.
It will be easier to read and understand by both humans and computer systems.
The semantic retrieval engine of the suite perfectly understands the requirement.
The chances to find coupled or inconsistent requirements is increased.

Quality "on the fly"

The Requirements Authoring Tool is also able to provide highly valuable quality information.

All the quality information currently reported by RQA is also generated, «on the fly» by RAT, thus reducing even more the time needed for V&V, peer-review, double checking… In other words, «Right the first time».
Among other metrics, the quality information reported by RAT includes the detection of inconsistences, coupling requirements, ambiguous requirements, non-atomic requirements, use of the wrong verb tense, mode or voice, consistent use of measurement units…

Boilerplats customization

Since not two organizations are alike, RAT is able to use a customizable set of boilerplates. Thanks to its integration to knowledgeMANAGER, boilerplates can be enhanced or created. RAT will be aware of those changes just when the quality manager of the projects agrees.

Furthermore, RAT users can take advantage of a very easy-to-use mechanism to suggest new boilerplates ,or changes to the existing ones, to the knowledge base architects. It is his/her responsibility to apply or deny the suggested changes.

RAT into the Requirements Quality Suite

RAT is the tool every System Engineer or Business Analysts may need to write better requirements. The behavior and recommendations of this tool are led by:

Requirements Structure and grammar (boilerplates):

Knowledge Base architects must define a set of accepted boilerplates.
The Quality Manager of the project must agree what boilerplates can be used in the present project.
Both roles can check the usage of the agreed boilerplates. This could also lead to identifying missing requirements.
RAT users may suggest changes on the set of boilerplates as well as in the System Knowledge Base (SKB). Those suggestions must be attended by the knowledge base architects using knowledgeMANAGER.

Requirements quality:

The Quality Manager must agree on what metrics and quality functions will rule the quality of the project.
The Quality Manager and Project Manager can check the quality of the project by using RQA.

Requirements Authoring Tool is currently connected to IBM DOORS, this solution is currently certified as Ready For Rational Software. Other integrations are planned within 2Q13.