In the dynamic landscape of modern product development, software and product engineers are faced with the formidable challenge of creating smart, interconnected products. This complexity is compounded by the need to adhere to rigorous regulatory and safety standards while accommodating diverse design requirements. Enter Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) from IBM, a transformative solution that not only enhances collaboration and productivity but also provides a comprehensive view of the entire product lifecycle.
In this blog, we’ll explore seven compelling reasons why ELM should be on your radar.
1. End-to-End Engineering Lifecycle Management:
Success in today’s environment hinges on having a system that manages the entire engineering lifecycle. IBM’s ELM suite offers a comprehensive solution that encompasses requirements management, systems design, modeling, and testing. These tools are regarded as the gold standard for systems engineering, Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), and DevOps at an enterprise scale.
2. Seamless Collaboration in a Dispersed World:
With engineering teams often spread across the globe or working remotely, effective communication and collaboration are paramount. ELM tools from IBM empower engineers to create and monitor progress across work items. They facilitate adherence to Agile, SAFe, or custom processes, ensuring consistent work across the entire engineering lifecycle.
3. Change Management and Version Control:
Flexibility in change management is a key feature of ELM. It provides a unified view of the truth, allowing different roles—software engineers, systems architects, product managers—to coordinate and synchronize projects at different paces. This fosters full visibility and traceability, from individual requirements to test cases, as well as robust version and variant management.
4. Future-Ready Knowledge Management:
ELM acts as a knowledge network for your engineering data, preparing your organization for the future by constructing a reusable linked data set. It seamlessly integrates with applications supporting Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC), facilitating scalable engineering operations for complex projects and improved delivery cycles.
Just like managing source code, ELM offers robust control over variants and versions for all engineering data. This includes the ability to branch, merge, and baseline engineering data, thereby promoting the reuse of changes across variants. The outcome is enhanced productivity, quality, and cost-effectiveness in product development.
6. Leveraging AI for Efficiency:
ELM integrates pre-defined industry solutions and innovative AI-driven features to stay at the forefront of engineering standards. By harnessing the power of AI, ELM provides real-time insights into engineering data. This proactive approach helps detect errors early in the product lifecycle, preventing costly rework and schedule disruptions. The result is smarter, safer, and more cost-effective product development.
7. Industry Trust and Recognition:
ELM from IBM enjoys the trust of nine out of ten major automotive companies and nine out of ten leading pharmaceutical companies. Furthermore, industry insights from IDC underscore IBM’s pivotal role in digital transformation within product development.
In conclusion, when considering investments in engineering tools, ELM emerges as a compelling choice. The need for enhanced productivity and cost reduction is paramount, and ELM stands out as a game-changing solution. As IBM Partners, MicroGenesis is here to assist you on this journey. If you’re ready to explore how IBM ELM tool can revolutionize your engineering practices, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is a Product development tool that helps organizations manage the entire lifecycle, from requirements management to testing and quality assurance. However, implementing IBM ELM can be a time consuming process that requires careful planning and execution.
In this blog, we’ll provide tips for getting started with IBM ELM and ensuring a smooth rollout, based on our experience as an IBM Business Partner and a certified IBM ELM partner
1.Define Your Goals
Before implementing IBM ELM, it’s important to define your goals. This involves understanding the features and functionalities that are most important to your team, as well as any specific customization needs. Work with your team to identify what you wish to achieve with IBM ELM and prioritize them based on their importance.
2. Assess Your Current Processes
To ensure the successful implementation of IBM ELM, it’s important to assess your current development processes. This involves understanding your current workflows and identifying areas for improvement. This will help you tailor your implementation plan and ensure that IBM ELM is integrated seamlessly into your existing workflows.
3. Choose a Certified Implementation Partner
Working with a certified partner like MicroGenesis can help you to ensure successful implementation of IBM ELM. Certified partners have expertise in the implementation of IBM ELM and can provide guidance and recommendations based on best practices and their own experience. Additionally, they can customize IBM ELM to fit your specific needs and integrate it with other software development tools used in your organization.
4. Create a Project Plan
Developing a project plan is essential for a successful rollout of IBM ELM. The project plan should outline the steps required for a successful rollout, including timelines, milestones, and responsibilities for each team member involved in the implementation. This will help to ensure that the implementation stays on track and that everyone involved knows what they need to do.
5. Build a Pilot Project
Starting with a pilot project is a good way to try out IBM ELM before rolling it out to the entire organization. A pilot project will help you to identify any potential issues and make necessary adjustments before going live. The pilot project should be representative of the types of projects that your organization typically works on and should involve team members from different departments and roles. The pilot project will also help in getting the team to understand the basic feature and capabilities of the solution and install confidence in the team
6. Train Your Team
Proper training is crucial to ensure that your team is fully prepared to use IBM ELM effectively. This includes understanding the features and functionalities of the tool, as well as any specific customization or workflows that have been implemented. Working with a certified implementation partner like MicroGenesis can help to ensure that your team is properly trained with hands-on experience of the tool and that they have access to ongoing support.
7. Plan for Deployment
Planning for deployment is an important step in ensuring a smooth rollout of IBM ELM. This involves determining the best approach for deploying the tool, such as a phased approach or a full deployment. Additionally, it’s important to consider any potential risks or issues that may arise during deployment and develop a plan to mitigate them. Planning for deployment in advance can help to ensure that the implementation is successful and that the tool is adopted by the organization smoothly. The product deployment architecture can vary based on various parameters such as number of users, number of licenses, etc and the product can be deployed on multiple environment such as production, staging, etc
8. Monitor Progress
Regularly monitoring progress is essential to ensure that IBM ELM is being used effectively and efficiently. This includes tracking metrics such as productivity, cycle time, and license usage. Regular monitoring will help you to identify any potential issues and make necessary adjustments to ensure that the tool is being used effectively.
Implementing IBM ELM can be a time consuming process, but by following these tips, you can ensure a successful implementation and get the most out of the tool. Defining your requirements, assessing your current processes, choosing a certified IBM ELM partner like MicroGenesis, creating a project plan, building a pilot project, training your team, and monitoring progress are all important steps to ensure a smooth rollout. As a certified IBM ELM partner, MicroGenesis has the expertise and experience to help you implement IBM ELM successfully and achieve your product development goals.
Requirements Management is a set of powerful techniques for capturing, analyzing, prioritizing, and agreeing on requirements to ensure that engineering teams always have up-to-date and approved requirements.
It helps to reduce errors by keeping track of changes in requirements and promoting effective communication with stakeholders from the start of a project to the end of the engineering lifecycle.
Ultimately, the purpose of requirements management is to ensure that product development goals are achieved in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Why Do Requirements Processes Often Fail To Deliver the Expected Business Results?
Cause :
The lack of a unified and fully defined requirements engineering process.
Use of general purpose applications or multiple authoring tools.
Inconsistent requirements data.
Lack of communication across business and functional silos.
Individual groups interacting with requirements that are relevant to their functional process.
Solution :
Requirements should be the unifying force that binds all teams together and keeps them focused on delivering value to customers throughout the entire product development cycle, from conception to completion.
All engineering disciplines, including mechanical, electronic, and software, must work in tandem to ensure that the requirements are met and that customers receive a product that meets their needs.
What Are “Requirements”?
A requirement is “a singular documented need of what a particular product or service should be or do” such as:
Functional Requirements describe certain behaviors (or functions) of “what the system shall do”
Non-Functional Requirements describe how well these behaviors (or functions) should be performed,
Requirements guide the entire development of a system. These Requirements:-
Originate from numerous sources
Should be cohesive, complete, consistent, correct, current, feasible, unambiguous and verifiable
What is ‘Requirements’ for Successful Requirements?
It is the agreement between all stakeholder about process of requirement definition
These are tools capable of capturing perceptions, knowledge and communication
Central Repository
Capture all requirements and related data such as discussions and comments
Allowing access to all involved parties.
IT infrastructure enabling collaboration
Internal and external collaboration
Support of different formats suitable for business and technical people
Text, graphics, tables, diagrams
Ability to enforce a defined workflow
Including approvals, clearance, etc.
Shared Glossaries
Reduce ambiguity on terminologies
Ability to enforce a established Change-Management process
They aid in
Structured Approach for a Good Requirements Management
Break-down requirements into hierarchies
From high-level architecture to low-level design
From the entire system down to the mechanical, hardware and software disciplines.
Manage relations between requirements
From one level to another and in between.
Add attributes to requirements
Author, History, Priorities, Risks, etc.
Make requirements visible across the entire lifecycle
Provide access to requirements to all participants in the process.
Errors, detected late in the Maintenance phase can cost up to 200 times more than detected early in Requirement Analysis phase
More than 40% of development budget can be consumed by poor requirements
Project Impacts :
41% of projects fail to deliver the expected business value and ROI
49% of projects overrun original estimates
28% of projects on time and on budget
Project Delays :
Being late to market by 6 months or more will cost organizations 33% of the 5-year ROI5
Having a Requirements Management Plan (RMP) is critical to the success of a project because it enables engineering teams to control the scope and direct the product development lifecycle. Requirements management software provides the tools for you to execute that plan, helping to reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and improve quality control
The Proper Requirements Management Plan
Requirements Management Process through Systems Engineering V-Model
A typical requirements management process complements the systems engineering V-model through the following steps:
Collect initial requirements from stakeholders
Analyze requirements
Define and breakdown requirements
Capture additional information along with requirements
Prioritize requirements
Agree on and approve requirements
Trace requirements to implementation items
Assess impact of changes
Communicate the change to involved parties and stakeholders
Verify requirements
Version requirements
Make requirements accessible to all participants involved
Using a requirements management solution helps to streamline the process so you can optimize your speed to market and expand your opportunities while improving quality.
Digital Requirements Management
Digital requirements management (DRM) is an invaluable tool for getting everyone on the same page, including contractors, suppliers and customers.
It provides a secure, central location to store requirements, while improved collaboration, transparency and agility ensure that standards and compliance are met.
Furthermore, DRM’s inbuilt reporting capabilities allow for tracking of the project’s status. In sum, DRM is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes.
Using AI, engineering teams can more easily flag poorly written, incomplete and ambiguous requirements while receiving real time coaching on how to improve them.
End-to-End Lifecycle Traceability with Requirements Management
Traceability is the key to compliance
Initial requirements will be decomposed, which creates traceability relationships.
Other relationships can also be traced such as “consists of”, “verifies”, etc.
Traceability must be enforced in order to ensure consistency and completeness.
Traceability from customer requirements through product development to test and delivery enables organizations to:
Know which requirements are implemented and tested vs. those which are not
Manage and defend against scope creep.
Change Management Process
Changes to requirements are inevitable.
Requirement Change Requests (RCR) can occur as early as the requirement elicitation phase, or as late as product development or maintenance phase, and thus a process for proposing and managing changes will ensure consistently and in a controlled manner.
The change management process is important for ensuring that changes are implemented smoothly and without issue
Variant Management
Variant management is the process of managing different variants of a product or system, which may share some common features and functions but also have unique features that distinguish them from one another. In the context of engineering and product development, variant management involves defining, documenting, and controlling the different configurations of a product, as well as managing the relationships and dependencies between them. This is important for ensuring that products are designed and produced efficiently, effectively, and with the necessary level of quality and consistency. Variant management is often used in industries such as automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing, where products may have a large number of possible configurations or options.
Some potential benefits of variant management in requirements management include:
Improved efficiency
By managing requirements for different product or system variants in a systematic way, variant management can help reduce duplication of effort and improve overall efficiency in the development process.
Increased agility
With effective variant management, development teams can more easily and quickly adapt to changes in market demands or customer requirements by leveraging existing requirements and building on top of them.
Better quality
By managing requirements more effectively, variant management can help ensure that product or system variants meet the necessary quality standards and requirements.
Reduced costs
By reusing existing requirements and building on top of them, variant management can help reduce development costs associated with creating new requirements from scratch.
Better traceability
With effective variant management, it becomes easier to trace requirements across different product or system variants, making it easier to manage and maintain different versions of the product or system.
Best Practices of Writing Good Requirements
AI in Requirements Management
Using AI, engineering teams can more easily flag poorly written, incomplete and ambiguous requirements while receiving realtime coaching on how to improve them
By adding AI to your requirements management strategy, you can strengthen the quality of your requirements while reducing errors and costs.
Benefits of Good Requirements Management
Provides Query attributes to find specific properties
“How many requirements are listed as high risk?”
Before change is committed.
“Which detailed requirements has no relation to a high-level user requirement?”
“Which higher level requirement has no lower-level requirement?”
“What lower-level requirements are affected if a high-level requirement changes?”
Using traceability reports for checking dependencies.Finding “missing” linksCoverage analysisImpact analysisKeep traceability
For each increment, if you develop incrementally with concurrent phases
For each variant, if you manage variants and product lines
Quality Management Needs Strong Linkages to Requirements
Requirements are the input for all quality and test specifications like
Functional Requirement define “What” the test object shall do
Non-Functional Requirements define “How well” the test object shall do it.
Quality Management linked to Requirements Management
Incorporates requirements in test- and quality plans.
Relates test cases, test suites, test execution and test result with requirements.
Shows which requirements are tested and which are not.
Provides traceability between and within hierarchies of requirements and tests.
IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next for Quality Management
This is a single platform for managing requirements so your teams can work more effectively across disciplines, time zones, and supply chains.
It is useful in :
Collaboration : Clarity across teams by establishing a single source of truth
Traceability : Connect requirements with tests, system architecture and your plan
Change Management : Understand impact of changes and track changes
Transparency : Customizable dashboards and reports for an easy overview
Optimization : Assess clarity and testability using pre-trained AI models
With IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next, you can
Create or import requirements
Link requirements and track traceability
Organize requirements in modules and components
Exchange and export requirements
Review requirements
Version and baseline requirements
IBM Requirements Quality Assistant
The requirements model, designed to be in accordance with the INCOSE Guide for Writing Requirements, is pre-trained to detect 10 quality issues, including unclear actor or user, compound requirement, negative requirement, escape clause, missing units, missing tolerances, ambiguity, passive, incomplete requirements, and unspecified quantities. This model provides a consistent and reliable approach to assessing the quality of requirements.
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