Visure Basics Tutorial - storage.googleapis.com

Visure Basics

Tutorial Visure Requirements ALM 6.1

www.visuresolutions.com

DATE

July 28, 2021

AUTHOR

Visure Solutions, Inc.

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Copyright © 2021 Visure Solutions, Inc.

Visure Basics Tutorial

Table of Contents 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 4

2 Purpose and scope ....................................................................................................................... 4

3 Installing the Visure tool suite ..................................................................................................... 4

4 The Visure Tutorial Database ....................................................................................................... 5

5 Getting started with Visure Requirements ALM .......................................................................... 5

5.1 Login ...................................................................................................................................... 5

5.2 First glance at the user interface ........................................................................................... 7

6 Specifications ............................................................................................................................... 9

6.1 The Specifications view ......................................................................................................... 9

6.2 Inside a specification ........................................................................................................... 10

7 Writing a specification ............................................................................................................... 13

7.1 Writing requirements .......................................................................................................... 13

7.2 Cross-referencing other elements in the document ........................................................... 16

7.3 Filtering ................................................................................................................................ 19

7.4 Saving and retrieving views ................................................................................................. 21

7.5 Inserting images, tables and captions ................................................................................. 22

7.6 Editing attributes ................................................................................................................. 24

7.7 Change management: Review and approval workflows ..................................................... 25

7.8 Attributes and attribute types ............................................................................................ 26

7.9 Manual sorting of requirements ......................................................................................... 26

7.10 Editing requirements and concurrent access .................................................................. 27

7.11 Versioning of requirements ............................................................................................. 28

7.12 Discussion forum ............................................................................................................. 30

8 Managing views ......................................................................................................................... 30

8.1 Adding columns and sorting ................................................................................................ 30

8.2 Filtering ................................................................................................................................ 31

8.3 Saving and retrieving views ................................................................................................. 34

9 Exporting the specification ........................................................................................................ 35

9.1 MS Word .............................................................................................................................. 35

9.2 MS Excel............................................................................................................................... 42

10 Importing an existing specification ............................................................................................ 44

10.1 MS Word .......................................................................................................................... 44

10.2 MS Excel ........................................................................................................................... 50

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11 Baselines..................................................................................................................................... 55

12 Traceability ................................................................................................................................. 55

12.1 Creating traceability from the tab ................................................................................... 55

12.2 Navigating through the links ............................................................................................ 57

12.3 Impact analysis, Suspect links, & Navigating between specifications ............................. 59

12.4 Traceability view .............................................................................................................. 62

13 Dashboards ................................................................................................................................ 64

14 Data Models: Defining specifications, element types, and traceability .................................... 65

15 Traceability Matrix ..................................................................................................................... 68

16 Global Parameters ..................................................................................................................... 70

17 Plugins ........................................................................................................................................ 72

18 Questions? Next steps?.............................................................................................................. 72

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1 Introduction As part of our mission, Visure Solutions provides innovative Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions that automate parts of the development process helping companies to develop safer and more reliable products. We believe that everything starts with requirements. Without a well-defined set of requirements, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to successfully carry out any other activity in the lifecycle such as testing, planning or design. That´s why at Visure, we aim to provide our customers with tools that will help them define good requirements and track them throughout the lifecycle. We would therefore like to welcome you to this tutorial and to the evaluation of the Visure tool suite, which we hope you will find useful.

2 Purpose and scope Throughout this tutorial we will cover different areas of the lifecycle, including Requirements Management, Risk Management, Change Management, Test Management and Defect and Issue Tracking features. If you are interested in a specific topic, you may jump directly to the corresponding chapter, even though we highly recommend following this tutorial. Even though Visure supports many phases in the lifecycle, it also integrates with other tools such as JIRA, Azure DevOps (former TFS), Enterprise Architect, VectorCast, TestRT, DOORS and HP ALM, as an example. If you’re interested in a complete list of integrations or want to learn more about any of them, please don’t hesitate to check our website or contact us directly. Due to the sector-specific nature of the development lifecycle, we have chosen to follow a standard V-lifecycle process in this tutorial. However, Visure provides sector-specific out-of-the-box templates, which we encourage you to try out on your own once you complete this tutorial. You will be able to choose from a wide range of sector templates (Aerospace&Defense, Automotive, Medical Devices, Railway, Industrial Automation, etc.) when creating new projects in the Administration Center. Finally, you will see a mix of information and directions. We’ve done our best to highlight the steps

you should perform in red as well as noted by this picture, .

Additional information such as in-depth definitions will be denoted by this picture, .

3 Installing the Visure tool suite The first step of this tutorial consists of making sure that you have installed all the components in the Visure Requirements ALM tool suite trial. The installation process is rather simple, and consists of three components:

• Visure Requirements: Execute VisureRequirementsALMClient.exe. Visure Requirements ALM is the

main component of the suite alongside the Administration Center.

• Visure Report Manager: Execute Visure Report Manager.exe. The Visure Report Manager will

enable the generation of reports such as traceability matrices and test summary reports.

• Visure Server: Execute VisureRequirementsALMServer.exe.

https://visuresolutions.com/

https://visuresolutions.com/support

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For the tutorial, we will only need Visure Requirements, not the Report Manager or the Server. You can check our videos on how to install Visure Requirements ALM at https://visuresolutions.com/video-portal#Installation_Videos Are you experiencing problems installing Visure? Contact us at [email protected]. We will be glad to help you.

4 The Visure Tutorial Database The Tutorial Database is based off of a standard template that Visure used for all of our evaluations. If you are following this Tutorial, not as an evaluation, but as a customer, please reach out to the Visure Helpdesk Team and they can provide you the exact template we use.

5 Getting started with Visure Requirements ALM Visure Requirements ALM is composed of two main components:

• Visure Administration Center: This component is in charge of database, project and user

management, and is therefore meant only for repository and project administrators. There is no

shortcut to this component in the desktop, and we will not cover it in this tutorial. However, if you

would like to explore this component on your own you can access it through the Windows Start

menu, Visure Requirements ALM program group, Administration Center.

• Visure Requirements ALM client: This is the application that will be the most used to manage

requirements, risks, tests, defects, tasks and any other elements you decide to include in your

project.

To start this tutorial, double click on the Visure Requirements ALM shortcut on your desktop.

5.1 Login The first thing you will see when opening Visure is the login page. This login screen displays the current connection to the database. This connection can be changed when connecting to a different database by clicking Change Database. When connecting to an evaluation database, input the specified Server Name, Port, and Visure Database included in your evaluation email.

https://visuresolutions.com/video-portal#Installation_Videos

mailto:[email protected]

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• Click on “Change Database” to bring up the connection screen. Input the details of the

evaluation server that you received in your email. Select the database that you have been

assigned.

• Login

• The combo box should display a variety of projects:

o InstaMed: This is a sample of a typical systems engineering project that we will use to

demonstrate the features in the product.

• Select the InstaMed project. Frank´s role in the project is that of a Requirements and Risk

Engineer, so this role will be automatically selected from the list.

• Click on Login.

5.2 First glance at the user interface Once you open the Evaluation project, you should see the following view:

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You will notice that on the left-hand side there is an Element Types Panel. This panel displays five icons that represent the five main areas of the tool.

The first icon is the Dashboards view. This view will display a set of customizable widgets with charts on the project.

The second icon is the Views view. In here, you will be able to find a list of your own views as well as the views that have been shared to you. Views are specific configurations of a

specification.

The third icon is the Specifications view, where we currently are. It displays the complete list of specifications for the project, along with document properties. The fourth icon is the Data Models view. Data Models put specifications into context and establish a graphical representation of the traceability rules. The fifth and last icon is the Traceability Matrix view. The Traceability Matrix displays the cross section of how items are traced and connected together.

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6 Specifications 6.1 The Specifications view We are currently in the specifications view, as you can see by the blue line in front of the Specifications icon.

This view displays a browser with the complete list of specifications. We will be able to open any specification simply by double clicking on top of it.

You will quickly see that this tutorial project provides support for change requests, requirement specifications, test specifications and their executions (runs), defects and risk management. You can also see that this tutorial provides an example for an Agile environment, even though this is simply an example of how a project can support different types of processes within the same environment. The grid at the right-hand side displays a detailed view of the same specifications, along with document properties. You will be able to create, edit and delete documents/specifications directly from here, as well as classify and sort them conveniently through drag and drop.

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6.2 Inside a specification • Expand the “Requirements Specifications” Folder and Double-click on “Product Requirements”

specification in the browser to open the document.

If you scroll down the view, you will see that Visure Requirements ALM looks very similar to MS Word. This is intentional, as many users are used to this environment. However, there are multiple ways of representing the requirements in the specification, which we will explain in a moment. This view is composed of several elements. The first one is the navigation panel on the left. You may have noticed that the browser with the list of specifications has changed to a navigation panel displaying the list of requirements. At the top of this list, you will always find the name of the specification you are at, and you will also find an arrow that will help you go back to the list of specifications.

At the right-hand side, you will be able to see the grid. The grid is the area that displays the elements in a specific way determined by the user. In our case, we have configured a predetermined way for you that you will be able to change later to better fit your needs.

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On top of the specification, you will find the classification and filter toolbar. The classification toolbar allows you to select between five different ways of displaying the requirements:

Document: This mode displays elements in a MS Word-like view Hierarchy List: This mode displays elements in a MS Excel-like view Attributes: This mode displays elements classified by an attribute. You may also open this view by right clicking on an enumerated attribute column header and selecting “Group by this column” Traceability Tree: This mode displays a traceability view, starting with the elements in the specification. This traceability can be upstream or downstream. Access Partitions: This mode displays elements classified by the access rights, in case the elements in the document take several types.

• Click on the “Hierarchy List” button to display requirements in a table format.

• Right click on any column header and select Column Chooser > User Attributes > Status.

• Repeat the process again and select the Verification Method attribute.

• Repeat once more and select Column Chooser > System Attributes > Description and Code.

• Uncheck Column Chooser > System Attributes > Sorting Number

• Adjust the column width to your own convenience.

As you can see, there are multiple options to choose from when it gets to displaying information in these columns in this view. All information not being displayed in the columns can also be accessed through the Properties Panel which can be found at the far right-hand side, under the Details tab.

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Now that we have configured the view a little bit, we should make sure we do not have to do this every time we open Visure. To do this, we will save this view.

• Go to the Views tab in the Ribbon and click on Save Current View.

In this dialog box, we will have two different options:

- Save view as… will overwrite the current view.

- Create new view will save the view and make available in the list to restore it whenever

needed. Inside this option, you will find two other options:

o Create new view as predetermined for the current specification: This means that

every time we open this specification, it will appear in the exact way that we saved it.

o Create new view as predetermined for all specifications: This means that all

specifications will be opened in the same format as the view we are saving, in this case,

as a table with the Status and Verification Method columns.

• Select Create new view and give this view the name “Product Requirements List” and click ok.

We will use this view in a later chapter.

• Go to the Views view ( ). You will see that the view we just created appears in the list. Any

time we want to retrieve it, we simply need to click on it.

This list of views is specific to you and will not be available to other users unless you share it with them. The views that have been shared to you are displayed under SHARED VIEWS.

• Go back to the Product Requirements specification by clicking on the Specifications view and

selecting Product Requirements (under Requirement Specifications).

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• Access the Column Chooser and under System Attributes, select Code. We will use this column

in the next section.

One last thing you need to know about the specifications is that you are able to search for terms in the view by typing in the filter field:

You may either type in a text to search for it in the document, or you may create complex filters through the advanced filters option. Let’s continue the tutorial by learning some basic concepts on how to write a specification.

7 Writing a specification 7.1 Writing requirements In this chapter we will see how to create requirements, chapters and the rest of the elements that make a specification, and we will then see how to create a new specification from scratch. Creating requirements, tests, risks, and other item types is very easy once the project has been set up. To create a new requirement in the document, simply select the item under which you want to create the new requirement and go to the Editor tab > Add Item or Add Child option. You may also find this option in the context menu by right clicking on top of an item, or through the INS (Insert) key on your keyboard. Using the shortcuts may save you a lot of time when writing specifications.

• Navigate to requirement “2.1 InstaMed ergonomics”.

• In the Ribbon at the top, go to the Editor Tab, then click on the "Add Item" button ( ). This

will create a new requirement listed as 2.2 PR_XXXX, with an empty name.

• Type in Operation Time in the name space.

As you can see, creating requirements is quick and simple. New requirements will be included in the same specifications as the selected requirement (in case they belong to several) and can also take

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the same attribute values or even traceability as the selected requirement. You may configure these options through the Options menu > Configure Quick Insert.

What is a code? PR_XXX is a unique identifier, called Code in Visure Requirements ALM, that is automatically assigned to each requirement/item. This code will unambiguously identify

the element throughout the project. The prefix in the code is also assigned by Visure Requirements ALM depending on the element type. In our sample project, Product Requirements will use PR_, System Requirements will use SR_ and Component Tests use CT_. The way codes are constructed is customizable by the user. Additionally, you may configure whether you want to allow users to modify the codes proposed by the system, or whether they are fixed throughout the project. In this sample project, you will be able to modify the proposed codes, even though you may change this option in the Administration Center. Please refer to the User Manual for further information on this topic. You may have also noticed that there is a column called isRequirement that displays the value “Heading”, “Term” and “Item” for the elements in the specification. Our new requirement will display “Item”, which is the default value for this attribute. As opposed to the requirements, some elements in the specification like the “Purpose” or “Introduction” chapters, are not meant to be traced to other elements in the project. These elements can be categorized as "Heading", “Term” or "Text" in the "isRequirement" attribute, whereas traceable elements such as requirements, tests or risks should be categorized as "Items", even though this list can be tailored to your own needs.

This categorization will help us later in the project to filter those elements out and find the real requirements coverage of the specification. It will also be necessary when exporting the specification to MS Word, so that each element type (item, headings, and text) inherits different formats and styles.

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What is the different between a Heading, a Term, an Item and a Text? “Heading” elements are simply chapters in the document that help classify and organize the specification, whereas “Terms” are references to terms in the glossary, or external

standards or documents. Individual terms do not need to be created as individual elements in Visure and they may all be included as a table within a Heading element. However, if we intend to reference these specific terms from within other requirements in the document by means of a cross-reference, then we will have to create them as separate elements. “Text” elements can be used as a paragraph within the requirements to add information or clarifications to them, such as notes, without being a binding element of the specification. If you do not use “Text” elements, you may delete this value from the attribute type. “Items” are elements such as requirements or tests that are legally binding and should therefore be traced to other elements such as lower-level requirements, tests or change requests. When exporting to MS Word, headings will display a numbering, a title, which is the element name, and a description; requirements will display the code, name, and description; and text will only display the description.

What is a name? Is it mandatory? In the case of headings, names act as the chapter title. In the case of requirements, they act as a summary, or subject of the requirement, indicating the topic the requirement is

referring to. The same guidelines for email subjects should be applied to requirement names (concise, self-explanatory, etc.). These names will come very handy when searching requirements throughout the specification or the project, or simply when organizing requirements. Requirement names are not mandatory, unless the project has this setting activated. Requirement names are not very common when working with MS Word documents as paragraphs are not usually moved around, and Word documents cannot be filtered, hence, the lack of need for names. However, in Visure, we highly encourage this best practice. Creating chapters in the document is similar to creating requirements, but instead of selecting “Item” in the isRequirement attribute, we can select “Heading”. To create subchapters, click on Shift + Ins, the Edit > Add Child Item option in the menu, and the “Add Child" button.

• Once the new 2.2 PR_XXXX Operation Time requirement is created, select it and double click on

the space under the name to edit the description. This will expand the area for the

requirement’s description. You may find all the toolbars for the RTF editing in the Description

Tools tabs.

In case you are not displaying the RTF description, you may also edit the description in the Description panel at the right-hand side.

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If you cannot find the Description panel, click on the "Show/Hide Description Panel" button in the

toolbar, under the Editor tab ( ) or right click on top of the element and select "Edit Description". Descriptions in Visure Requirements ALM are RTF documents, so it will support images, tables and OLE objects among other kinds of elements.

• Enter the following text in the description panel “The system shall be capable of operation for 5

years, according to standard”

7.2 Cross-referencing other elements in the document Sometimes, we may need to refer to other chapters, terms, or requirements within the same specification. An example may be a requirement referencing a standard or a different chapter. we will use cross-references to create these referrals. Cross-references inside Visure will be

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represented as hyperlinks within the element’s description. However, when we export the specification to MS Word, these hyperlinks will be converted into MS Word cross-references.

• To create a cross-reference, double click the description that we just modified to display the

Description Tools. Click on the end of the description after “standard”, add a space.

• Then, In the Description Tab, click the Hyperlink button and select Cross-reference:

The complete list of elements in the document will be displayed so that you can select the element to refer to. Select any of the standards in the document, MIL-SDT-1547B, for instance, and click on Ok.

A hyperlink will be displayed in the requirement’s description.

In the 9.1Managing views Adding columns and sorting Elements in Visure Requirements ALM have system properties such as a code, name or description, but can also have additional custom properties such as a Verification Method or Status.

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These properties and custom attributes can only be accessed through the Details tab, but they can also be displayed in the view as columns. In order to add new columns to the view, right click on the header of any of the existing columns and select "Column Chooser” and select the desired columns to show.

• Try displaying the Status attribute by choosing the Column Chooser > User Attributes > Status

option.

• Also display the Code (Column Chooser > System Attributes > Code

Some columns display visual information on the requirement. For instance, the Link Indicators

column ( ) displays an arrow and a number, indicating the number of relationships and their direction. If you hover over the icon, the tooltip will display the complete list of relationships.

In order to remove a column from the view, simply drag and drop it outside of the grid. In order to sort elements and remove sorting, you may do it through the context menu.

• Right click on top of the Status column header and select “Sort ascending by this Column”.

In order to remove the selected sorting, simply select Remove all sorting criteria.

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7.3 Filtering

Filters can also be accessed through the "Filter" toolbar . This quick filter option will work similarly to a Google search, in which only the elements displaying the typed text in the columns will be displayed. This filter will search on all the columns currently being displayed and the description of the displayed items.

• If you displayed the Status attribute in the previous step, try typing in “Approved” in the search

box to display the requirements currently in that state.

Apart from the quick filter option, there’s also an advanced filtering option that will allow users to combine filters to create complex searches. Filters are specific to each user; however, we will see in the next chapter how to share some of these elements between users. Example of these complex filters include:

- Display all requirements (not chapters) that do not have downstream traceability, or do not

have tests associated with them.

- Display all requirements that have been modified or added since the last baseline.

- Display all elements in the project that I’m currently modifying (checked out by me).

In order to create these filters, you may do it through the filter dialog ( ). This will display the complete list of existing filters in the project.

You may create new filters by clicking on the New button and combining criteria through AND/OR operators.

• Click on the filter dialog icon ( ).

• Click the New button

• Name it “Items and Steps”

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• Click “Add a new criterion” and select “Attribute”

• Set the attribute to “isRequirement” = Item

• Click “Add an additional criterion (or)” and select “Attribute”

• Set the attribute to “isRequirement” = Step

• Click Save.

• We’ll use this filter later.

• Create another filter, but only with the Item criterion and name it “Items”

In order to activate one or several filters, display the list by clicking on the arrow beside the filter icon and select the desired filter.

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• Enable the Items filter you just created.

Notice that whenever a filter is displayed, a notification is displayed on top of the column header:

To deactivate a filter, simply select the “No active filter” option from the list of filters, but let’s not do that just now.

7.4 Saving and retrieving views Configuring a view to display the elements you need in the exact way you want may take time. In order to prevent having to go through this effort every single time, it is possible to save the configuration in what we call “Views”. These views are specific to each user but can be shared among user groups. They provide a quick way of organizing the project and sharing this organization with other users of the project.

• To save the view we just created, go to the Views tab and click on the Save Current View button.

• Select the “Create new view” option and name it “Product Requirement Items”.

• Click OK

• This new view will be displayed in the list of existing views along with the rest.

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• Navigate to the list of views from the Elements Panel at the left-hand side:

This will display the following view:

• In the browser panel, you will see the complete list of views. Click on the one we just created.

Go ahead and explore the different views! Exporting the specification chapter, we will see how these cross-references are exported to MS Word document.

7.5 Inserting images, tables and captions Inside the Ribbon bar, you will find the Description tab, where you will find all the RTF editing tools. You will also find the Add Table, Add Picture, and Add Object icons, among other options. They can be used to insert tables, pictures or OLE objects such a MS Visio diagrams, MS Excel spreadsheets or AutoCAD files. You may also drag and drop these files from your desktop into the description panel to embed them automatically. Even though you may edit tables directly from Visure, it is also possible to copy and paste a table from MS Word, if necessary.

• Go to the Description tab. If you have a Visio diagram or a MS Excel spreadsheet that you would

like to embed, click on the “Object” option arrow and “Linked Object” option instead and select

the file.

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It is also possible to create objects instead of include existing ones by clicking on the Object button. A list of available applications will be displayed, which will depend on the applications installed on your computer or server, including third party application files such as Visio, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect files, BPMN files, CAD files, audio files, etc. although the ability of users to edit these objects will depend on the availability of the corresponding application in their own environment or server.

• Click on the “Picture” button and insert a picture file. You will see that an object has been

created with a preview of the image that you uploaded. This object will now be available for the

rest of the users.

When including tables and images, it is possible to insert a caption above or below them.

• Select the new object.

• Click on the Insert tab and select the "Captions" option, "Above selected item", or "Below

selected item" as desired:

• Give the image a name by typing it in the caption, for instance.

Captions are numbered sequentially and automatically within the corresponding context. Inside Visure Requirements ALM, caption numbers will be restarted at each element's description. However, when a specification is exported to MS Word, each caption will be numbered automatically according to the overall number of figures or tables in the specification.

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7.6 Editing attributes Now that we have entered the requirement’s code, name, and description, let’s enter some additional information in the form of attributes. Visure Requirements ALM supports custom attributes and types, which can be created and modified through the Project Organization > Attributes, and Project Organization > Types menus. This tutorial project includes several attributes by default.

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To edit these attributes, select the corresponding requirement and display the Properties panel.

If you cannot find the Properties panel, click on the "Show/Hide Properties" button in the toolbar.

, or right-click on top of the element and select "Edit Properties". The first tab you will see is the Details tab where we will find the list of attributes applicable to the selected item.

• Select our new requirement 2.2 PR_XXXX Operation Time.

• Display the Properties Panel, Details tab and scroll down to the bottom of the tab.

• Double click on Verification Method and select “Analysis”.

7.7 Change management: Review and approval workflows • In the same list of attributes, you will also see a “Status” attribute. Transition the new

requirement from “New” to “Reviewed”.

• Once changed to “Reviewed”, try changing the value again. You will see that the list of values is

different than the first time we changed the value. This means that there is a workflow

associated with this attribute.

Workflows are enumerated attributes on top of which we establish certain rules and behaviors.

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An example of a workflow is the "Status" attribute we just changed. For example, to transition a requirement to an "Approved" status, you will need to have the permission level of a Requirement Engineer, and the requirement must be in "Reviewed" status. Workflow rules are created graphically:

You may modify/add/remove a status to a workflow by modifying the attribute type itself. You may also modify the transitions between statuses through the menu Project Organization > Attribute Workflows. Inside the workflows view, open the Properties Panel, Details tab, and click on Edit. You can create as many workflows as needed. For example, you may have one for requirements, another one for the documents, and another one for the change requests. We will review workflows in more detail in the Visure Administration Tutorial.

7.8 Attributes and attribute types The tutorial includes an initial set of user attributes that you can modify at any time to meet your needs. These include attributes such as Release, Model, Verification Method, and Responsible, which may or may not apply to your organization’s process. Each attribute may have its own type, for example: boolean, text, date, or a custom list of values, as well as a multivalued list. You may modify these attributes in the "attributes view", which you will find in the backstage panel. Learn more on how to modify attributes and attribute types in the Visure Administration Tutorial.

7.9 Manual sorting of requirements After creating an element or chapter, you may find out that we need to include it in a different chapter or under a different category or we may simply want to move it somewhere else within the document. Changing the sorting of items is simple. Drag the requirement through the specification and drop it under the desired requirement as needed. You will see that while dragging the requirement, a red bar will indicate the target location.

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When dropping the requirement, a dialog box will prompt the user to select whether to move the requirement as a brother (1.1, 1.2, etc.) or as a child (1.1.1, 1.2.1, etc.) of the requirement under which it has been dropped.

When the specification is long, it is more convenient to do sorting through the Start Move and Finish Move options in the Ribbon and the context menu. The Start Move option allows us to select the elements we want to move, and the Finish Move option allows us to indicate where do we want to place the elements.

NOTE: It is very important to note that when moving a requirement, all of its children will be moved along with it. Likewise, if we want to move all the children of a requirement, we do not need to select all of them, as they will be moved along with the parent.

7.10 Editing requirements and concurrent access Concurrency in Visure Requirements ALM is supported through a simple check-in and check-out mechanism. Whenever you finish creating or editing an element, right-click on it, and select "Check-

In". You will see that the check-in was committed because the lock will appear closed ( ). This will indicate to other users that this particular element is available for check out.

• Right-click on the new requirement and select the Check-In option.

Check-In comments are an explanation of why the changes were made, which will be associated with the specific version of the item.

• Enter “Requirement created while following the Visure tutorial” in the change description and

click on Ok.

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Users will only be able to check out elements that are checked in, which means elements that are not being edited by any other user. If this is the case, simply right-click the element and select "Check Out". The status icon will indicate that the check-out was successful when it displays an open lock icon (

). Other users will then see a closed lock with a yellow dot indicating that the element is being edited by another user.

• Right-click 2.1 PR_0060 InstaMed ergonomics and check it out or click on the Check Out button

in the Ribbon.

• Modify the description and replace “Hospital” with “Clinic”.

• Once you’re finished, right-click the requirement and check it back in.

• A window will be prompted asking you to enter a reason for this change so that others and your

future you can know. Enter “Modified Hospital by Clinic”.

If you ever check out a requirement by mistake, or you want to revert the changes you just made, right-click the item and select “Undo Check Out”. This will roll back the requirement to the previous version. Visure Requirements ALM keeps track of all changes made to all items in the project, in a sort of audit trail. You will be able to see the history of a requirement and other properties in the "Properties" panel, Versions tab. If you cannot find the tab, click on the "Show/Hide Properties Panel" icon in the toolbar.

7.11 Versioning of requirements Visure provides an FDA 21 CFR Part 11 – Electronic records, compliant configuration management for items, in which records are kept for every change in the project.

• Right-click on 2.1 PR_0060 InstaMed ergonomics and click on Edit Properties, to display the

Properties panel.

• Go to the Versions tab.

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This tab will display what was changed, when it was changed, who made the changes and why.

• Select the two available versions and click on the Diff button at the right-hand side. This should

display a red line of all the changes made to the description.

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7.12 Discussion forum The discussion forum can be found in the Discussion tab in the properties panel. This forum helps teams keep discussions centralized and available to all users, avoiding point-to-point emails. Users will be able to post new comments, reply to existing comments, and authors will be able to resolve comments, or re-open comments that had been solved before. Any user with at least “read-access” rights will be able to post comments.

• Enter a comment by clicking on the Add button at the bottom of the tab. It is not necessary to

have read/write access rights to enter comments in the discussion forum. Users with read-only

access rights i.e., reviewers, will also be able to do so.

8 Managing views 8.1 Adding columns and sorting Elements in Visure Requirements ALM have system properties such as a code, name or description, but can also have additional custom properties such as a Verification Method or Status. These properties and custom attributes can only be accessed through the Details tab, but they can also be displayed in the view as columns. In order to add new columns to the view, right click on the header of any of the existing columns and select "Column Chooser” and select the desired columns to show.

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• Try displaying the Status attribute by choosing the Column Chooser > User Attributes > Status

option.

• Also display the Code (Column Chooser > System Attributes > Code

Some columns display visual information on the requirement. For instance, the Link Indicators

column ( ) displays an arrow and a number, indicating the number of relationships and their direction. If you hover over the icon, the tooltip will display the complete list of relationships.

In order to remove a column from the view, simply drag and drop it outside of the grid. In order to sort elements and remove sorting, you may do it through the context menu.

• Right click on top of the Status column header and select “Sort ascending by this Column”.

In order to remove the selected sorting, simply select Remove all sorting criteria.

8.2 Filtering

Filters can also be accessed through the "Filter" toolbar . This quick filter option will work similarly to a Google search, in which only the elements displaying the typed text in the columns will be displayed. This filter will search on all the columns currently being displayed and the description of the displayed items.

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• If you displayed the Status attribute in the previous step, try typing in “Approved” in the search

box to display the requirements currently in that state.

Apart from the quick filter option, there’s also an advanced filtering option that will allow users to combine filters to create complex searches. Filters are specific to each user; however, we will see in the next chapter how to share some of these elements between users. Example of these complex filters include:

- Display all requirements (not chapters) that do not have downstream traceability, or do not

have tests associated with them.

- Display all requirements that have been modified or added since the last baseline.

- Display all elements in the project that I’m currently modifying (checked out by me).

In order to create these filters, you may do it through the filter dialog ( ). This will display the complete list of existing filters in the project.

You may create new filters by clicking on the New button and combining criteria through AND/OR operators.

• Click on the filter dialog icon ( ).

• Click the New button

• Name it “Items and Steps”

• Click “Add a new criterion” and select “Attribute”

• Set the attribute to “isRequirement” = Item

• Click “Add an additional criterion (or)” and select “Attribute”

• Set the attribute to “isRequirement” = Step

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• Click Save.

• We’ll use this filter later.

• Create another filter, but only with the Item criterion and name it “Items”

In order to activate one or several filters, display the list by clicking on the arrow beside the filter icon and select the desired filter.

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• Enable the Items filter you just created.

Notice that whenever a filter is displayed, a notification is displayed on top of the column header:

To deactivate a filter, simply select the “No active filter” option from the list of filters, but let’s not do that just now.

8.3 Saving and retrieving views Configuring a view to display the elements you need in the exact way you want may take time. In order to prevent having to go through this effort every single time, it is possible to save the configuration in what we call “Views”. These views are specific to each user but can be shared among user groups. They provide a quick way of organizing the project and sharing this organization with other users of the project.

• To save the view we just created, go to the Views tab and click on the Save Current View button.

• Select the “Create new view” option and name it “Product Requirement Items”.

• Click OK

• This new view will be displayed in the list of existing views along with the rest.

• Navigate to the list of views from the Elements Panel at the left-hand side:

This will display the following view:

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• In the browser panel, you will see the complete list of views. Click on the one we just created.

Go ahead and explore the different views!

9 Exporting the specification 9.1 MS Word The export to MS Word is a very simple 3-step process in which we will be able to configure the elements we want to export as well as their format. The export to MS Word will only export the specification as it is being displayed, so you will be able to filter the elements and decide which ones will be exported.

• Open the “Product Requirement Items” view we created and disable the filter (select No Active

Filter in the Filter List)

• Click on the Export/Reports tab and "Export to Word" ( ) button. This will display the

Template configuration step.

You may select to export to MS Word “Normal” template (Blank document), or you can select a .dotx template of your own. For your convenience, we are providing a template with the tutorial that you will be able to adapt to your own needs. You will find this template in the Tutorial folder in the Program Data folder.

• Select the “Template” option and click on the ellipsis button. Select the “Visure Export to

Word.dotx” template that you will find in the

C:\ProgramData\Visure\VisureRequirements\Tutorials\VR Tutorial folder.

• Within this template, there is a tag which will be replaced with the requirement information.

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• Type in “[reqs]”, without the quotation marks, in the “Tag where to include elements” field.

• The second step will allow you to select what type of information to export, and how. Configure

the export in the following way:

• For “Specification” –

• We will not export this type of element, so uncheck the “Export” option.

• For “Heading” –

• We want to export the headings that we have created in our specification, so check the “Export”

option.

• Select the “Export in hierarchical mode” option, which will export these types of elements with

Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 type of styles.

• Select “Name” option, so that headings do not display the codes (unique IDs). We do not need

them for the chapters.

• Make sure the “Export description” option is enabled.

• “Export attributes” and “Export traceability” should be disabled.

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• For “Item” –

• We also definitely want to export the items that we have created in our specification, so check

the “Export” option.

• Select the “Export in plain mode” option.

• Select the Code option and “Code and name” sub-option, so that requirements display their

codes (unique IDs) and their names (if they have one). Select the “Requirements” style.

If you do not have names for the requirements, you may want to display the code of the requirement followed directly by the description. You may export requirements in this way by selecting the Code and description sub-option inside the Code option. • Make sure the “Export description” option is enabled.

• Let’s disable “Export attributes” and “Export traceability”

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• For “Text” –

• We will not export these types of elements, so uncheck the “Export” option.

• Let’s create a new type of element to export, the Terms. Terms may be elements in a references

or standards chapter, which we may want to export within a table, or with a specific format.

• In order to create a new format for an element type, click on the icon at the bottom of the

list of element types at the left-hand side. This will create a New type. Select it and enter the

following configuration:

• Name: ”Term”

• We want to give terms a specific format, so check the “Export” option, and select the

isRequirement attribute in the “Attribute” combo box, and Term in the “Value” combo box.

• Select the “Export in plain mode” option.

• Select the Code option and “Code and name” sub-option, so that requirements display their

codes (unique IDs) and their names (if they have one). Select the “Terms” style.

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• Click on Next >.

• The third and final step allows you to export specification properties in Visure as MS Word

document properties, such as the name, document number, version number and status.

• Let’s map the existing attributes to the properties in the following way:

Visure attributes Document Properties

DOC ID DOC ID

Revision Revision

Status Doc Status

Before generating the MS Word document, you may save this configuration to an XML file to share it with other users, even though you will not need it yourself, as the next time you export, the previous configuration used will be displayed.

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• Click on the Finish button. The MS Word document will start to generate.

The export is a read-to-use document that you will be able to send to your customer or supplier. If the document was generated correctly, you will be able to see that the cover page and the header have been populated automatically with information from the database including title, revision number, document id and status: (The header fields may need to be updated manually)

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The Table of Contents, Tables and Figure will have been generated automatically:

Headings will have been exported with MS Word heading styles:

Terms will have been included inside a table:

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Requirements will display the selected style:

and cross-references will have been converted into actionable MS Word cross-references:

Remember that all these styles are configurable and may take your corporate format. Now, let’s see how to export to MS Excel.

9.2 MS Excel The MS Excel export works in a very similar way to the MS Word export, even though it requires even less configuration. The export will generate a MS Excel document containing the elements and columns currently being displayed in the view. If you would like to export any specific information, simply display it as a column and export it.

• In the same view, click the Show/Hide RTF Description button in the Ribbon to Hide the

Description.

• Show the Description column (Column chooser > System Attributes > Description)

• Hide the Suspect Link and Link Indicators columns (Drag them off the grid)

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• Your view should look similar to this:

• You may want to save this view to come back to it later.

• Click on the Export to Excel button inside the Export / Reports tab.

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• In the exported sheet, add a new requirement at the end of the list, including the code, name,

description and status, and change the description of some other requirements.

We will reimport these changes back into Visure in the next chapter, so save the file in a location of your choice.

10 Importing an existing specification Importing requirements or test cases is a fundamental activity when starting with a Requirements Management tool. Visure Requirements ALM allows users to import sets of requirements, tests, risks and other element types as well as complete specifications from MS Word and MS Excel. Visure Requirements automatically installs and enables both the MS Word and Excel Import Plugins. If you do not have this plugin installed, or have any issues installing it, please don´t hesitate to contact us at [email protected].

10.1 MS Word • Open the “PRD for Visure Import.docx” file that you will find in the

C:\ProgramData\Visure\VisureRequirements\Tutorials\VR Tutorial folder.

You will see that this document is a standard specification document. If the Visure MS Word Import plugin was installed correctly, you will see the VR import button at the top right corner of the application.

• Click on the VR Import button to display the options.

• Check on the “Capture Document Heading Styles” option. This will display a dialog box. Use the

following configuration settings:

• Code: Select “Use header number with prefix and suffix”. Enter “_prd” in the suffix. This will add

a suffix to the heading number (1, 1.1, etc.), preventing a conflict when importing chapters from

other documents.

• Name: “Use header text”

• Description: “Next paragraphs until the next element”

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• Click on OK.

Once you have configured the import of the hierarchy you need to configure the import of requirements.

• Click on the combo box and select “by text”.

• This will display a dialog window. Use the following configuration settings:

• Select “Search by text pattern (Regular expression)” in the field, enter the following regular

expression, without the quotation marks “PR_\d+”

• Code: “Captured text”

• Name: None.

• Description: “Remaining text until next element”

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What is a regular expression? A regular expression is a standard set of characters used to search for a text pattern. You can consider regular expressions as wildcards on steroids. We use regular expression to

search for requirement IDs through the document and extract them from the rest of the text. For instance, “\d” stands for “decimal”, and “+” stands for “one or more appearances. Therefore, “\d+” means several digits, which is basically a number. When we search for “PR-\d+”, the regular expression will find codes such as PR-001, and PR-124. However, it will not find PReq-9 or PR02. There’s extensive literature online on regular expressions. You can also refer to the Visure MS Word import plugin documentation to learn more about regular expressions. Want to learn more on regular expressions? You can check out Microsoft´s page: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/regular-expression-language-quick-reference Want to build and test some regular expressions on your own? We highly recommend checking out this webpage: https://regex101.com/

• Click on OK to start the search for chapters and requirements.

• The Import dialog box will preview the list of chapters and requirements identified during the

process. Click on each identified element will highlight the text within the document. Click on

the elements to make sure that everything you need to import has been detected, and that you

are satisfied with the result.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/regular-expression-language-quick-reference

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/regular-expression-language-quick-reference

https://regex101.com/

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Notice that there is a Status column indicating “Pending Sync”. Once we compare the items with the information in the database, this column will indicate whether the items are already existing, but have been modified, whether they exist and they are identical, or whether they are new.

• Once you are ready to start the compare, click on the “Compare items” button.

• Enter the location of your Visure Server (either local or one provided) and click Connect.

• Select the correct repository and enter your credentials and click on Connect.

• You will now be able to select a project, a role and an access partition in which to place the new

specification.

• Select your project in the Project combo box.

• Select your role (either Project Manager or Requirement Engineer) in the Role combo box.

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• Select Requirements and Risk Management in the Access Partition combo box.

• The Specification combo box can be left as-is.

• You may also select an existing specification, or you can create a new one. By default, a new one

will be created with the name of the current MS Word document.

• Click on the Preview button to start the comparison process.

• Once the comparison is finished, you will be able to see the new values in the Status columns,

with New, Modified, or Unmodified values.

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• Check the items you would like to create or update into the project.

• Click on Synchronize items.

The synchronization process may take a couple of minutes.

• Once finished, go back to Visure Requirements Client and click the Specifications button on the

left.

• Refresh the view by clicking on Editor > Refresh, or simply press F5. You will be able to see that a

new specification has been created at the bottom of the list.

• Open the PRD for Visure Import specification. You will be able to see that the specification was

imported as expected.

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10.2 MS Excel • Go back to the Excel document that we generated earlier and modified.

• Click on the VR Import button to display the options.

• Highlight the entire table, table headers and all requirements.

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• Select Capture Requirement by Columns

• Here you can select which columns contain data that needs to be imported. One important thing

to note, any attributes besides the 4 main ones (Code, Name, Description, Traceability) must be

named in Excel and Visure exactly the same i.e., Verification Method, Status, etc.

• Use the following configuration:

The Import dialog box will preview the list of requirements identified during the process. Click on each identified element will highlight the text within the document. Click on the elements to make sure that everything you need to import has been detected, and that you are satisfied with the result. We will not see the Custom Attributes in this preview, but the plugin has already captured them.

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Notice that there is a Status column indicating “Pending Sync”. Once we compare the items with the information in the database, this column will indicate whether the items are already existing, but have been modified, whether they exist and they are identical, or whether they are new.

• Once you’ve reviewed the captured elements, click Compare Items.

• Enter the location of your Visure Server (either local or one provided) and click Connect.

• Select the correct repository and enter your credentials and click on Connect.

• You will now be able to select a project, a role and an access partition in which to place the new

specification.

• Select your project in the Project combo box.

• Select your role (either Project Manager or Requirement Engineer) in the Role combo box.

• Select Requirements and Risk Management in the Access Partition combo box.

• In the Specification box, select Product Requirements.

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• Click on the Preview button to start the comparison process.

• Once the comparison is finished, you will be able to see the new values in the Status columns,

with New, Modified, or Unmodified values.

• Before Synchronizing, uncheck the first item as it is just the Specification Heading which does

not need to be imported.

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• Click Synchronize and wait for the process to finish.

• Go back to Visure and refresh the view pressing F5 or selecting Edit > Refresh, to see the

changes.

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11 Baselines Visure Requirements ALM supports the concept of baselines.

What is a baseline? A baseline is a “snapshot” or picture of the project (or a subset of it) at a specific point in time. Basically, baselines are versions of a specification or a group of specifications. Once

created, they can only be accessed in read-only mode and cannot be modified. However, having a version of the project can be very useful, for instance, to restore it in case something went wrong, or to compare different versions to know what’s new. Baselines can also be used to create new projects, which allows branching off a specific version from the current project. The creation and comparison of baseline is done in the Administration Center, which will be addressed in the Administration Tutorial. The list of available baselines can be found in the Review tab.

• Go to the Review tab in the Ribbon.

Select Version 1 from the baselines combo box to activate this baseline.

When a baseline is activated, you may search, query and organize the elements in this previous version as needed. However, only the operations in read-only mode will be available and you will not be able to modify any element.

• When you are done, select Current in the combo box to return to the current status of the

project.

12 Traceability 12.1 Creating traceability from the tab Traceability is a fundamental aspect in Requirements Engineering as well as the rest of the processes in the lifecycle. Traceability represents the commitment between the higher-level object, or what needs to be done, and the lower-level objects, or how is it going to be done. Traceability also enables accountability and tracking. Creating traceability is very simple in Visure and it can be done in multiple ways. One of them is through the tabs:

• Navigate back to our “Product Requirements Items” view

• Select requirement PR_0060 InstaMed ergonomics

• Go to the Properties panel > Linked Items tab

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NOTE: If you cannot find the Properties Panel, don’t forget that you can bring it back by clicking on the Properties button inside the Edit tab in the Ribbon

• Click on the "Edit" button to enable the creation and deletion of links.

• Select “System Requirements” in the Non-linked items combo box.

You may have noticed that even though the project contains dozens of specifications, the combo box only displayed a small number of them. The combo displays only the specifications we can trace to, avoiding confusion and inconsistent traceability. This means that the project contains a set of rules of what can and cannot be done. These rules are defined through the Data Models, which we will address in a later chapter.

• Select the item SysReq_0080 Power Supply and click on the down arrow to establish a link.

If you close the Properties panel and refresh the view (press F5 or click on the Refresh button in the Editor tab in the Ribbon), you will see that the Link Indicators is updated with this new link:

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12.2 Navigating through the links We have just seen that the Link Indicators icon displays the list of related elements. It is very convenient to be able to navigate from this list directly to any of the requirements in the list. To do so, right click on top of the icon, and a list of elements will be displayed in a menu, which we will be able to select in order to navigate to them.

• Right-click on top of the Link Indicators icon of the “PR_0060 InstaMed ergonomics”

requirement.

• Select requirement “SysReq_0040”.

A new tab/window will be opened, displaying the specification and item selected from the list:

Notice that any opened windows will be displayed in a tab at the bottom left corner of the window, allowing us to easily switch from one to another:

In order to close a tab, click on the cross icon at the far-right hand side of the bar.

or by right clicking on the tab and selecting “Close”

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Now that we have both specifications opened at the same time, let´s organize them to display them side-by-side.

• Go to Views tab and select New Vertical Tab Group. This will display both specifications side-by-

side.

• In order to maximize the space, collapse the navigation panels of both specifications by clicking

on the Show/Hide Navigation Panel

• Collapse the Ribbon bar by either double clicking on any of the tabs.

This will give you an optimized view to establish traceability as well as see multiple documents side by side:

You may now establish traceability by holding the CTRL key and drag and dropping requirements from one specification to another one. You may also establish traceability by selecting an item or group of items in one specification, clicking on Start Link from the Traceability tab, and selecting an item or group of items in the other specification and click on Set Relationship.

• Ensure that the requirement we created at the beginning of the project, “PR_XXX Operation

Time is checked out and also check out the “Packaging” requirement in the System

Requirements specification.

• Select Operation Time

• Press Shift + CTRL key and keep them pressed.

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• Drag “PR_XXX Operation Time” under “Packaging” on the right-hand side.

• A new window will appear requesting confirmation to create the link:

• Click on Ok to create the link.

• Close the System Requirements specification by clicking on the Close Window button at the

bottom right corner of the application. This will display the Product Requirements maximized

again.

12.3 Impact analysis, Suspect links, & Navigating between specifications You may have noticed that to the left of the Link Indicators icon in the “PR_0060 requirement”, a

red exclamation mark has appeared. This exclamation mark indicates that several requirements are affected by the modification we’ve made to this requirement in one of our previous steps. The affected requirements will also display the exclamation mark, effectively notifying users that the requirement they are working on may be subject to change. The authors of affected requirements will have to assess to which extent their requirements are affected by this change or not. In order to perform a change impact analysis:

• Go to the Specifications view and select System Requirements.

In the System Requirements specification, you will see that some elements display the suspect icon, and therefore, they may be subject to change. However, it may be difficult to know which

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requirements from the complete specification are affected, so we will filter the specification to display only the elements with suspect links:

• Inside the System Requirements specification, apply the “Suspect links” filter to display only the

affected requirements.

For each one of the suspect elements, we will have to assess whether the requirement needs to be adapted to the change or not.

• Find requirement “SysReq_0030 Cart Mobility”. It should have a suspect link.

• Hovering the mouse over the Suspect Link Indicators column. This will display a tooltip indicating

which element triggered the suspicion, PR_0060 in our case:

• To see exactly what was the change that triggered the suspicion, right click on the suspect links

icon and select “PR_0060 InstaMed ergonomics”. This will take you to the item that triggered

the suspicion.

• Now that PR_0060 is selected, go to the Properties panel, Versions tab.

• Select two versions (version numbers 0016 and 0018) and click on the Diff button. This will show

both versions side by side.

• Once in the version comparison, click on the description comparison button ( ). This will

display the exact changes that triggered the suspicion:

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This comparison will give us the exact change that triggered the suspect, and we will be able to make a decision on whether this change requires us to adapt our requirements or not. Firstly, though, you may have noticed the picture is now missing in this requirement. This was due to the Excel import we processed earlier, which did not include the picture in it. Let’s rollback one version to get the picture back.

• Select version 0017 with a Change Description of “Changed Hospital to clinic”

• Click Restore next to the Version.

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• A window will appear to ask to restore the traceability from the previous version as well, click

yes.

• The process should finish successfully or with an error. We can ignore the error for now.

Now that we’ve seen what the change in the original requirement was, lets decide whether that affects our requirement in the System Requirements.

• Go back to the System Requirements specification. You will see that there´s a tab at the bottom

that will take you straight to the specification.

• Once back in the System Requirements specification, select requirements “SysReq_0030 Cart

Mobility”.

• Right click on the requirement and select “Delete Suspects”, or go to the Traceability Tab and

click on Delete Suspect Links

You may also select a group of requirements and delete the suspect links for all of them at once. On the contrary, if the affected requirement does need to be modified, we will simply check it out, and perform the corresponding updates, which will, at the same time, trigger further suspect links downstream to component requirements.

12.4 Traceability view Apart from the post-mortem analysis we have just seen, Visure Requirements ALM also allows displaying requirements in a hierarchical view with the traceability from higher to lower levels. All specifications provide a traceability view that shows the impact of changing a particular requirement.

• Go back to the list of specifications, and go to the Product Requirements, if you’re not already

there.

• Click on the Traceability Tree icon in the View type toolbar.

• Hide the RTF Description if it is showing.

• Select Outgoing traceability. If we were in a different specification, we would be able to display

Incoming or Outgoing traces by selecting our preference from the combo box:

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• Navigate to requirements “InstaMed ergonomics”, right-click and expand the tree to find out all

the elements potentially affected by this change:

We have also prepared a specific view for you in the list of Views.

• Go to the list of views and select Impact Analysis of Product Requirements. This is a very similar

view but displaying some additional columns that we thought you would find interesting, such

as the Type Icon and the Pass/Pending/Fail information of the tests.

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13 Dashboards The Dashboards are a great way of having a quick summary of the progress of the project or an individual specification. They give us accurate and significant information that can be tailored to each project. In our case, the dashboards display contextual information. This means that the information displayed will change depending on which specification we trigger them from, or whether we have any specification selected at all.

• Open the System Requirements Specification, and click on the Dashboards icon in the Element

Types panel at the left-hand side.

This will generate the System Requirements dashboard:

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At the top left corner of the dashboard, you will be able to see information on the Project and the Specification the Dashboard is generated from. Below this information you will be able to see the different pages underline in red, which are groups of widgets. In our case, we can see the Dashboard page. It is possible to tailor these pages and create more than one. Within the Dashboard page, we can see all the widgets, and the information displayed for the System Requirements, in this case. These widgets are customizable per project. Please refer to the user manual for further information on how to customize the dashboards.

14 Data Models: Defining specifications, element types, and traceability So far, we have covered many features that will help us in the Requirements Management process. You should now be able to play around with the tool, create specifications, requirements and traceability, and this might be a good time to let all that sink in before going to the next topic. Take a break and once you’re ready to proceed, we’ll see how all the elements we’ve seen so far, from product and system specifications to tests and executions fall in together into a seamless process. We will see that opposed to having isolated documents and elements, Visure Requirements provides “Data Models” which is our way of putting all artifacts in context, while defining the rules of what can and cannot be done. These “Data Models” will eventually become the backbone of our projects.

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What are Data Models? A Data Model is a graphical representation of element types and subtypes in the project e.g., requirements, tests, risks, etc. and the allowed traceability between them. These

element types are what we call in Visure "specifications", and these diagrams are called "data models". These diagrams are customizable and project administrators will be able to adjust them to represent the specific elements and traceability of the specific project. Examples of data models include requirements V-lifecycle, test management, issue tracking and risk management. These diagrams should give you a clear understanding of the overall structure of a project. Let’s take a look at some of them:

• Click on the Data Models button in the Element Types panel. This will display the complete list

of Data Models in the current project.

• Select the “System Process” option from the list. This will display the actual Data Model:

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The elements in the diagram are the following:

• Specifications: The boxes represent specifications such as the Product Requirements.

• Association links: The thin arrows represent the allowed links between the specifications e.g.,

between Product and System Requirements, or between Product Requirements and Acceptance

Tests. This means that the elements inside these two specifications may be traced by the users. The

links define the type of links that can and cannot be defined. If a link does not exist between two

specifications, links may not be established between the elements inside.

What are the implications of the direction and the link type name? Both the direction and the link type name are semantic and for information purposes only and have very little implications. It is up to you and your organization to decide how you

would like to name these relationships. You may call the link between product and system requirements “Satisfied by”, and establish the direction from product to system requirements, but you may also name the link type “Satisfies” and establish the direction from system to product requirements. Whether you decide to implement one or the other, it is highly recommended that you keep it consistent through all the diagrams.

• Generalization links (hierarchy): The thick-headed arrows represent a hierarchical relationship

between a type and a subtype, usually named “type of”. It is primarily used to represent folders and

subfolders e.g., Component Requirements is a folder that will contain the Mechanical, Electrical and

Software Requirement Specifications.

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This relationship is represented in the list of specifications as a hierarchy:

These hierarchical relationships can help us organize the specifications better and help us work

with all subtypes at once. For instance, if we establish a link to the Component Requirements

Specification, this will imply that we are tracing to all three subtypes (Mechanical, Electrical and

Software), as they all are a type of Component Requirement. In the same way, if we apply an

attribute to the Component Requirements, it will apply to all three subtypes as well.

• Navigate through the different diagrams in the project: Risk Management, Test Management,

Issue tracking, etc. to get a feel for the different processes put in place in this project. If this is

not useful to you, it is also possible to delete specifications and data models from the project.

Are data models defined at project level? Data models are defined at project level, however, they are part of the project templates as well, so when a new project is created, the data models will be included also. Visure

Requirements ALM comes with several out-of-the-box templates featuring multiple sectors and standards (Aerospace, Automotive, Railway, Medical Devices, etc.). These templates include the initial data models to comply with the standards applicable to each one of these sectors. Does this diagram represent what you are doing at your company? Need to adjust it to fully reflect your own terminology? You may adapt these diagrams to your own specific needs, or you may create a new project out of any of the built-in templates for standard compliance provided by Visure. In the Administration Tutorial we will see how to create and modify these Data Model.

15 Traceability Matrix Traceability matrices are an important way of validating the requirements coverage and reviewing the end-to-end traceability of a project.

• Navigate to the Traceability Matrix button on the left side.

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• Once displayed, unless you have changed the specification names in the project, select the

following options in the dialog box:

• Column 1: Product Requirements

• Column 2: System Requirements

• Column 3: Component Requirements -> This includes all the specifications child of this one i.e.,

Software, Hardware and Mechanical.

• Column 4: Risks

• You may decide to include or not the item descriptions in the report.

• Once you’ve selected all these options, click on Ok. The report should be generated as follows:

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You may export this Traceability Matrix to different formats including PDF and XLS through the Save menu.

16 Global Parameters Visure Requirements ALM contains a powerful tool that can be utilized across an entire project, Global Parameters. Global Parameters can be compared to constant variables. A reference can be made to this Global Parameter and be seen in multiple requirements. If a change is needed to this variable, it can be updated in one place and the change will cascade to the requirements that have this Global Parameter included. Some examples Global Parameters are located in the “Global Parameters” specification inside “Standards and References”.

• Open the Global Parameters specification

Here we see Logo Size, Locations, and Ease of Calibration as Global Parameters. Let’s create a new one and implement it inside a requirement.

• Add Item in the Global Parameters specification

• Name it “Maximum Operation Time”

• Edit the Description to say, “maximum operation time of 10 years.”

• Open the Product Requirements specification

• Select our requirement “Operation Time”

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• Edit the description and go to the end of the line.

• In the Ribbon, navigate to the Description tab and select the arrow under Hyperlink > Global

Parameter.

• Select the Global Parameters Specification

• Select “Maximum Operation Time”

• In the Value box, select Description and click OK.

• Click off the requirement to stop editing and you should see the Global Parameter become the

value that we gave it earlier.

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• Go back and edit the “Maximum Operation Time” Global Parameter and return to the Product

Requirements specification

• You may need to Refresh (F5) the view, but the Global Parameter will update to match the

change.

17 Plugins Did you know that Visure Requirements has powerful plugins that can assist in the ALM process? We have developed plugins for Risk Management and Test Management. If you are interested in these topics, please look at our Plugins Tutorial document.

18 Questions? Next steps? Congratulations! You have completed the Basic Tutorial. We hope you found this tutorial useful, but we understand that you may have many more questions. We recommend that if you´re interested in knowing more, you proceed with the Administration Tutorial, however, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] for technical questions, or [email protected] for pricing or licensing information.

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