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Open Source Requirements Management Systems?

Posted by Cliff on from the digital-organizational-tools dept.

scphantm asks: "I have the wonderful (and rare) job of building a development department from scratch. One of the things im doing right now is looking for the software im going to use company wide to manage the department and the various projects we are going to have. I have some great ideas for OSS project management software, but the one piece of the puzzle that im missing is a good requirements management system. I have found a few that will do what i want but i have serious issues spending $1200 to $10,000 a seat! I sat down and put together a wish list for what I would want in a Requirements Management System, is there anything like this out there?" While SourceForge and it's free counterpart Alexandria may have a few of the pieces to his wishlist, scphantm has some decent ideas that Project Managers might want to think about.

"I have used your basic Word docs and Excel spreadsheets in the past for this but it just simply wasn't up to snuff as far as I'm concerned. How have Slashdotters solved these problems?

My Wishlist

  • Has to be web based. We are going to be spread all over the country and i see no other realistic way of doing it.
  • Has to handle multiple projects
  • I want it set up so I can take the tree of requirements, click on a button and have it take a snapshot of those requirements and mark them as the requirements for version 1. I can then still use the original requirements tree to create the requirements for version 2.0, in the future. I then want the ability to compare the two snapshots and generate a report that I can give to marketing which says: "these are the changes from version 1.0 to 2.0"
  • I want the defect tracking integrated into it. Source code management I don't really care about, but bottom line, I want to be able to click on my snapshot of version 2.0 and run a report that itemizes everything in it, from requirements to bug fixes. I want to be able to look at a closed bug and see what release of the product it was integrated into. on this level, I really don't give a rats @$# about what version of data.h the fix was integrated in.
  • If I have a bug reported in version 1 of a release, I want it to flag the developers of version 2 that this may be an issue for them as well. Basically have a little bit of AI as far as who needs to know about a bug, and make sure to incorporate the fix for that bug into future releases.
  • I want security set up so there is a free communication during the process of requirements management. anyone who is anyone will be permitted to add input to new feature ideas using this system. the Development Director for the particular project would be the only one permitted to make a suggestion a requirement.
  • I want an impact tree. I want to be able to run a report to show the CEO that if he wants to change the encryption from Blowfish to AES, its going to impact these requirements."

13 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Take and give by OSSturi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Dear scphantm

    I would be very interested in your decisions regarding all the other parts of your open source development environment. Could you give us a summary of the tools you plan to use?

    I'd be happy to help you with the Requirements Management System. Unfortunetaly all I've ever used for this are plain text files...

  2. Microsoft by cscx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Microsoft Project + Sharepoint server for the collaboration. Oh, you want an open source (read: free) solution? Looks like you're shit out of luck, not even SourceForge is free.

  3. A platform for Web-based project management by PGillingwater · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, may I humbly offer my company's open-source contribution, which we call "Outreach Project Tool."

    It was really developed as a way to allow us to keep in touch with multiple customers and partners for various projects, and includes incident management, a knowledge base, bulletin board, document repository with versioning and notification, and a handy e-mail archiving system too. It has a few plug-in options, including a GANTT tool, and an on-line update capability. It uses LAMP, but will also run under Windows if you're able to set up MySQL, Apahce and PHP correctly.

    See: http://outreach.sourceforge.net.

    --
    Paul Gillingwater
    MBA, CISSP, CISM
  4. You just defined your new depts. first project. by Boss,+Pointy+Haired · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously, roll your own.

    There's nothing that meets your requirements better than something you rolled yourself, so get to it!

  5. We are using Aegis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Aegis is a nice configuration management tool:

    http://aegis.sourceforge.net/

    It has some of the wanted features.

  6. What about Wiki + Bugzilla by hashinclude · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I agree it won't be fully integrated solution, but you may consider some tradeoffs.

    Wiki (the interactive collaborative system, implementations I know of being TWiki and MoinMoin Wiki) can be used pretty effectivly for a lot of these things.

    I have tried using it. It does take a little getting used to, but once people (developers I am assuming) are hooked to it, there's no turning back. And i'm speaking from experience ;)

    As T/MoinMoin are open source implementations, you may even be able to integrate it into bugzilla without too much difficulty.

    Hrishikesh

    --
    US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
    1. Re:What about Wiki + Bugzilla by spRed · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have never seen a WikiWork

      The links are never UptoDate, there are LeafPages everywhere with NoContent. Or even worse there are LeafPages that say 'Note to self, put content here.' Half the pages should just be RetiredYesterday but no one ever seems to DoIt.

      www.worldforge.org is a PrimeExample. I'd love to know where they are in their CurrentDevelopment, but I can't find a DamnThing on the site.

      So what are wikis actually good for? Very short term collaboration and note taking with a very few number of pages. Everything else is just WikiMastrubation.

      Everything2 might be a great wiki derivitive but only because they spent alot of time tweaking it for a more specific purpose and threw out alot of the Wikiness.

      --
      .sig Karma out the wazoo, better to spend points elsewhere if this is above 2 or below 0
    2. Re:What about Wiki + Bugzilla by dubl-u · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have never seen a WikiWork

      I have used a Wiki happily for collaboration between a distributed team of eight (all working fractional amounts) over the course of the last ten months. We used it to track all requirements, to keep manuals, and as a general project intranet. Our project enough of a success that it was covered twice in the New York Times, so we must have done something right.

      On another project, I successfully used it to keep a distributed team of architects in touch, building a common coding standard, a common design standard and as a repository for a lot of tools, tips, and tricks.

      he links are never UptoDate, there are LeafPages everywhere with NoContent. Or even worse there are LeafPages that say 'Note to self, put content here.' Half the pages should just be RetiredYesterday but no one ever seems to DoIt.

      Is the problem that nobody in the team gives a fuck about communicating or writing things down? Or is it that they put the information somewhere other than the Wiki?

      www.worldforge.org is a PrimeExample. I'd love to know where they are in their CurrentDevelopment, but I can't find a DamnThing on the site.

      Then maybe you could GetOffYourAss and write it. Content doesn't magically appear in Wikis. Somebody has to put it there, and the person who wants it is often the best person for the job.

      Note also that you may be trying to use Wikis for the wrong thing. Wikis are topic-based; things like a StatusReport will only get updated if the people who have the knowledge find it useful to put the knowledge there.

      If you want a Wiki to be adopted, you need to rig things so that the people with the knowledge find that the easiest thing to do is to put the knowledge in the Wiki.

  7. How about Bugzilla... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... or whatever bug reporting tool you plan to use.

    Nice things about Bugzilla in this context:

    * Use 'enchancement' for requirements, and have them all owned by the project manager until they are finalized and assigned to a developer.
    * Lots of feedback possible from all parties
    * Use Milestones in order to get the r1/r2 distinction for reporting purposes -- bugs included and sortable.
    * It is truly free

    Works like a charm -- I used this for the dev group I set up from scratch to build a complete router/gateway system... It's not perfect, but, hey, what is?

    Cheers,
    matt.

  8. Re: requirements management by julian.harris · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Enterprise Architect, http://www.sparxsystems.com.au has a superb requirements management part, which allows you to very easily map use cases to requirements, assign versions, and generally be pretty wonderful.

    Though it's not open source, it's only $150. Windows only. It does excellent web-based export of data too, and powerful database replication.

  9. http://www.phprojekt.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.phprojekt.com
    Free, functional, I use it /w my company. Works very well & offers more functionality than any of the other projects I've seen posted above. I didn't make phprojekt, I just vouch for its usefulness.

  10. Re:Tigris? by passthecrackpipe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sourcecast sucks ass in so many ways, it is not even funny anymore. We have to use it on a daily basis at openoffice.org, and nothing is possible. The source is closed. Yes, the components are freely available, but the glue isn't. and the glue is what makes this thing tick. They have knocked up the infrastructure using some "WebMacro" kind of stuff, but none of the documentation is available - CollabNet say it is a "trade secret". This means that people hosting stuff at CN cannot customise their sites, and cannot do anything really more interesting then static HTML. I have some issues with how SourceForge run their club, but if you have to compare the two, SF.Net blows them away on every turn.

    --
    People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
  11. Requirements Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would like to have this sort of tool myself. I've been at enough startups where the requirements are in constant flux and are "managed" in the great verbal tradition. I used Requsite/Pro once (4+ years ago) and it was awful.

    I used Xplanner (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xplanner/) for a small project last spring and found it useful for a small project.

    You might also look at Jakarta Maven as a related useful tool

    I would add to your wishlist:
    * linkages to design specs, test cases, defects and source modules.

    * Team-based time estimates, project management hooks and actual time effort measures. (how can you commit to a schedule without knowing you velocity, vicinity and vector?)