inteGREAT - Interview With Asif Sharif
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A short while ago I got an email that stated "Organizations reinvent the same knowledge over and over again because of poor cataloging, traceability and redundancy in the knowledge that is created." Now that is someone who has been around the block!
Within projects, from requirements to design to code, it is always the same problem… a problem we all know from Kindergarten. As a kid I played this little game at school we called 'telephone line'. Twenty kids were hurdled up into a circle.
Photography by Jacob Botter.
One started by whispering a sentence in the ear of his neighbor, so the other kids couldn't hear what was said. The neighbor would say the same sentence to his neighbor, and so on, until the sentence was 'round circle'. The fun of the game was comparing what the last one had heard with what was originally said. Mostly, they didn't even come close.
The person behind the first statement is Asif Sharif, CEO and President of eDev Technologies, developer of inteGREAT, a requirements development platform and IT project management tool. Time for me to have a chat about his product, inteGREAT.
1. inteGREAT is a repository for requirements. How would the process of requirements gathering typically go using this tool?
With inteGREAT the requirements gathering process is quite simple. The business analysts focus on knowledge development, not writing documents. The process starts with identifying business requirements – such as strategy plan development. From there a knowledge base evolves to define business and software processes, events, business object (data) models, people’s roles, and business rules, and finally technology and integration requirements are defined.
As the knowledge builds, automatic traceability occurs between each requirements dimension. This, along with the risk plan (also produced by inteGREAT), is used by a business project manager for impact assessment and change planning.
Of course, inteGREAT also generates necessary documents such as software requirements and specification documents, use-cases documents, business rules catalogs and field definition matrices. And the quality assurance test automatically produces test cases, test scenarios and the field validation matrix.
Once requirements are developed, our product publishes online to the Requirements Portal. At this portal, stakeholders navigate and search the knowledge base, download documents, and can discuss and collaborate with each other.
Requirements gathering is usually time and labour intensive, but inteGREAT is a single integrated knowledge repository for all dimensions of requirements that supports knowledge reuse, analytics, reporting and collaboration – so the job gets done faster and better.??
2. What is different when using your tool than from how this process is typically conducted?
Requirement elicitation is usually a complicated process comprising many stages. Each stage requires a lot of paperwork as traditional elicitation techniques include JAD sessions, interviews with stakeholders, storyboarding, brain storming, affinity diagrams, knowledge/mind mapping, nominal group techniques, etc. Such activities demand a lot of effort in order to keep documentation consistent because manually-collected knowledge is always getting fragmented.
inteGREAT uses a six step methodology to define, manage, analyze, produce, publish and integrate, that supports knowledge development and increases team productivity. This reduces the effort of requirements and test development by 50% while improving quality, consistency and traceability.
3. Almost 15 years ago we saw the emergence of CASE tools. That didn't quite catch on. How does requirements development / inteGREAT / eDev relate to CASE?
Our product could be considered Requirements CASE 2.0. CASE tools in the software development industry have mushroomed in the last few years. These tools include code generators, automated testing and configuration management.
New methodologies and smart tools are developed to meet new challenges in software development and support effective implementation of standards and automation. According to a study by the National Institute of Standards & Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce (The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing), requirements errors are the number one cause of software project failures (costing U.S. companies approximately $30 billion a year in total), but yet many organizations continue to deliver requirements that are unclear, ambiguous or incomplete.
An intuitive, knowledge driven approach to requirements development is desperately required by the industry – inteGREAT fills this gap – where the older CASE tools did not.
4. If specifications or other documents are generated from inteGREAT, they are typically handed over to development. When something is seen as not feasible, the spec will be changed. In the document itself. How does inteGREAT help to keep the specifications consistent in this case?
The system provides the master data repository and source of reliable knowledge. With inteGREAT, when the knowledge base is updated, all related documents are auto-updated. This saves a lot of time in keeping BA and QA documentation up to date. Feedback from stakeholders is received through the our Requirements Portal. ??
5. In your press release you state that the use of this tool will reduce 200% of total spending. How is this reached?
Success with requirements pays off quickly when the product development cycle is shortened. Using tools enables a company to deliver the right product on time and reduce rework and the conflicts arising from unclear requirements. This reduces a company’s total product development spending.
inteGREAT is an agile tool that automates and standardizes requirements development – and eliminates time wasted in rework. inteGREAT also shortens test development time, improves product quality, produces correct and consistent documents and provides an effective Knowledge On Demand strategy for organizations to leverage across projects. ??
6. How does this tool relate to development suites in general? Is this a standalone system?
inteGREAT interfaces with popular tools such as IBM Requisite Pro, MS Office and HP Quality Center. inteGREAT exposes scripting framework for custom integration.
7. I loved your statement, "Organizations reinvent the same knowledge over and over again because of poor cataloging, traceability and redundancy in the knowledge that is created. inteGREAT solves these problems." Can you summarize how inteGREAT does this?
Thanks! Knowledge reuse and defragmentation are the key principles embodied and automated in inteGREAT. This means never having to define the same information and knowledge twice – even in a different context. inteGREAT supports development of catalogs for each requirements dimension, while at the same time integrates all dimensions to produce rich specification. These catalogs and specifications can be shared across various applications and indeed across the entire enterprise.
For more information about inteGREAT, visit the website.
Download here the first part of my book "Surprise! Now You're A Software Project Manager"
inteGREAT - Interview With Asif Sharif
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