Monday, December 03, 2007

Rosario: Business Objective, Feature and Requirement

Initial comment:

The following explanation is based on November Rosario CTP, and it is only my understanding of the product. Maybe I haven't got it right. Comments are welcome.

 

When you look at Rosario's CMMI work items, you meet some old and new types which used for Requirement Management:

  • Business objective (new)
  • Feature (new)
  • Requirement

Now,  as far as I could see, the CMMI project site hasn't been updated yet with descriptions for the new work item types, so I will try to describe their roles by myself.

 

A little bit about Relations

Rosario presents different types of relations between work items.

Parent - Child
Fulfilled by - Fulfills
Predecessor - Successor
Tested by - Tests
Related - Related

Some work items defines what type of relation they should be part of.
See below for details.

 

Business Objective

As I understand, it should represent a objective which can be achieved in multiple ways. it doesn't come to describe what should be done, it comes to describe what should be achieved.

Relations:

It's possible to have a tree of BO (Business Objective), but it seems Microsoft doesn't mean you use it in that way (you can see it by the lack of "parent-Child" in its UI).
Its main use is with Feature in "Fulfilled by - Fulfills" relation.

Feature

Feature, in contrast with BO, describe what should be done, in different levels of abstraction.

Relations:

This work item suggested to be used in tree like "Parent-child" Hierarchy of Features. It can also take part in relation of "Fulfilled by - Fulfills" with Business Objectives.

Requirement

Features and Requirement are really similar, and the only difference I could point out is that while Feature has the "Fulfilling" connection to other items (probably for use with BO) Requirement doesn't. in fact, it doesn't have a built in UI for a "Parent-Child" relation either, so it seems Microsoft wants us to use it as the most detailed and low level item in "Requirement Management" before Task level.

 

to be continued...

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