ReqCycle, a complete requirement engineering workshop

Description

Using requirements is good practice for any project. Requirements exist all along the V-Model, from stakeholders to code to testing, with several intermediate levels such as system and software requirements. During the engineering process, designers need to trace those requirements with different artifacts: model elements, documents, code, tests, and so on. And different models are used for different languages.

ReqCycle is an open source solution able to manage requirements and their traceability during industrial development. ReqCycle is included in the Eclipse PolarSys project.

The objective of ReqCycle is to be integrated into an industrial environment. The "big picture" diagram below summarizes how the tool is designed to be used.

Main features

The main features of ReqCycle are divided into two parts: requirements management and traceability analysis.

The requirements management capabilities of ReqCycle can rely on a data model definition. This data model allows the definition of business rules and constraints. To connect data to this data model, ReqCycle provides

• ReqIF import
• Document import feature (doc, docx, ods, odt) based on a future Kitalpha project (http://polarsys.org/projects/polarsys.kitalpha) named Doc2Model
• OSLC connection for DOORS, ClearQuest, etc.
• Model Import (SysML, etc.)

The traceability core engine of ReqCycle allows the capture and the creation of traceability links. The traceability links can be located at multi-level, and can be captured from high level requirements to code traversing low level requirements and design.

Figure 1 : Example of traceability analyzers

In the illustration below, the traceability is captured from design to high level requirements. An allocate relationship exists between one block and another one that implements a requirement.

Figure 2 : Example of multi-level traceability captured

To enable team working, ReqCycle will also provide features to connect requirements to an external database or to plug into version control systems (such as SVN and GIT).

Roadmap

• Migrate to Eclipse PolarSys working group
  • May 2014
• Finalize engineering support to get the complete cycle
  • EMF Traceability export for May 2014
  • July 2014 for other features
• More connectors to improve demonstration and interest
  • Before end of year for document imports
  • UI action language and industrialization (end of 2014)