Dear Darrell, IBM Rational RequisitePro is a software development tool designed to do requirements management. It lets team's author and share their requirements using familiar document-based methods (Microsft Word) while leveraging database-enabled capabilities such as requirements traceability and impact analysis. Of course, often overlooked is the fact that no matter how great the requirements management tool, it will not solve problems caused by requirements of poor quality.
Can IBM Rational RequisitePro be used to produce a requirements trace matrix for new product development projects such as medical devices? Some would say yes, especially if the medical device product is a combination of device functions and software features and its construction requires software programming. Others might contend that RequisitePro is really intended for software development and if the medical device product doesn't require software development, then RequisitePro would not likely be a good fit.
Would it be worth the expense to install ReqPro just to be able to produce a requirements trace matrix for a product with less than 100 requirements? The requestee in your department thinks so. I suspect that the answer would depend upon the nature of your requirements and how much of RequisitePro you can make use of. RequisitePro is not that expensive and IBM does offer a free trial. And, there are a lot of Requirements Management tools out there.
Can anyone provide me with an objective assessment of this application and what it is designed to do, and how that would apply to tracing product design requirements? The IBM website does a pretty good job of overviewing what RequisitePro does. And the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Tools Database Working Group (TDWG) provides a nice Requirements Management tools survey that includes RequisitePro.
I really like RequisitePro, but I am not sure it would be a good fit just to produce a trace matrix of a small number of requirements in a non-software environment. Perhaps IBM can give you a same class customer reference to chat with. If they can't, maybe that is your answer. Nice post, I hope we hear and learn from others.
Good luck..!
Mark Perry
VP of Customer Care
BOT International
