Innovate 2012: Integrating Requirements and Models with DOORS and Rhapsody: Lessons Learned at Lockheed Martin

Dr. Than Lam, Lockheed Martin Jeffrey R. Cohen, P.E., IBM Rational Software

Disclaimer

What follows is my interpretation and reporting of the presentation. I may have misunderstood things, but I probably didn’t. Still, this is my opinions along with actual facts. Keep in mind.

Introduction

The presenter actually told us about who he is and some of his background in detail. I like this. More speakers need to do this.

Workflow description

Bridge between DOORS and Rhapsody, bidirectional

There is a bridge between DOORS and Rhapsody, called Rhapsody Gateway. This imports the requirements from DOORS into the Rhapsody model, and then pushes derived requirements from the Rhapsody model back into DOORS. It does not appear that requirements are actually updated in Rhapsody, rather new requirements are detected from its models.

Lockheed has a system spec in DOORS, and development requirements in rhapsody.

System Spec -> Gateway -> Rhapsody -> New Requirements -> DOORS

You have to identify objects of interest, flag them in DOORS, send them to Gateway, then export from DOORS.

This presentation could use some screenshots by now. Just to assist the audience. You, the reader out there, have actually seen as much as I have by this point–nothing but text.

There are apparently a few options for sending the data

  • Bi-directional from DOORS to Rhapsody and back – Option 1

    • Transfer requirements from DOORS via Gateway
    • Model requirements in Rhapsody
    • Update the requirements in DOORS to match the requirements in Gateway
    • Create new (derived) requirements in Rhapsody
    • Export the derived requirements back to the same DOORS module or a new DOORS module
      • When getting new requirements from Rhapsody, the DOORS module outline is lost
  • Unidirection from DOORS to Rhapsody – Option 2

  • Rhapsody to DOORS – Option 3

There is a summary slide being shown that is like an excel spreadsheet. Illegible. 

When I presented at the Telelogic Conference in 2007 (the only presentation I’ve made) my presentation and paper were scrutinized heavily. System and Software Engineers need to be able to present data in a simplified manner. Presentations should be visual and with high-level bullet points, perhaps with some visual examples. I do wish IBM had some people to assist these guys. Be more like Steve Jobs and this guy  — save the detailed data for the white paper.

Demo

A demo was given and to be honest I was half paying attention. But it would be best to give a real example that anyone, even those who don’t know about UML modeling or DOORS, could understand. Tough, but not impossible.

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