We recently caught up with Pete Jones of Phonak AG in Switzerland to find out more about how he and his team manage complex project requirements with CaseComplete.

Serlio: Thanks for taking time out, Pete. What exactly is your role at Phonak?

Pete: I am a Requirements Engineer working as a member of the Systems Engineering team.

Serlio: What issues and problems were you trying to address with a requirements management solution?

Pete: Requirements Engineering is becoming established as a formal discipline within the business. Requirements documents were produced in Word and were sometimes quite cumbersome to read and maintain.

Serlio: Why did you choose CaseComplete? How did it address those issues?

Pete: CaseComplete was selected on the basis of its value proposition. We conducted a very aggressive evaluation of many products. CaseComplete stood up very well against the opposition especially from a price / performance perspective.

We are now able to gather requirements in a more structured way whilst retaining the Word format that our stakeholders know and love. This structured requirements capture enables us to generate more manageable texts from our requirements pool. These documents are architected to focus on the specific interest areas of a given stakeholder group. The result is that the requirements review process is easier for all parties and both the volume and quality of responses has increased. There is an expectation to see much stronger "requirements communication" within the business and we expect this to further improve over time.

Serlio: How long did it take to get up to speed with CaseComplete?

Pete: We were able to produce results (requirements gathering and custom reports) using the tool within hours. Of course, more sophisticated use of the tool takes a little longer and we still have work to do to fully embed the tools use into the department.

Serlio: Thanks for your time, Pete!

Pete: No problem.

Are you using CaseComplete in a team environment? Check out this video that shows how to use the new Shared Projects feature in CaseComplete.

The video walks through the scenario of two analysts collaborating on a few use cases and requirements. Take a look and let us know what you think.

Also let us know whether you'd like to see more of these videos on other topics related to CaseComplete or requirements management in general.

In CaseComplete 2009 R2, we added features that make it even easier for teams to collaborate on requirements. These features give you version-controlled, check-in/check-out access to CaseComplete projects. We call this set of features – appropriately enough – Shared Projects.

We’ve written a few papers to help you get started with Shared Projects. If you want to learn how to use the version control system built right into CaseComplete (we call it the Shared Project AddIn) take a look at this paper:

Working in Teams with CaseComplete

If you already have a version control system where you’d like to store your Shared Projects, you can do that too. Here is a list of papers describing how to integrate CaseComplete with a number of popular version control systems:

• Subversion
• Microsoft Visual Source Safe
• Microsoft Team Foundation Server
• PureCM
• AccuRev

If you use a version control system but don’t see it listed here, let us know – we’ll let you know if CaseComplete can integrate with it as well.

We released CaseComplete 2009 R2 today, which has some pretty exciting features for teams. Here’s the official press release.

Teams Collaborate on Requirements with CaseComplete 2009 R2

Serlio Software Development Corporation has announced CaseComplete 2009 R2, the newest version of its requirements management software. The software allows businesses to gather, organize, and communicate requirements. CaseComplete focuses on use cases, a technique for specifying requirements in a way that makes them easier to gather and understand.

New Features Focus on Teams

Features in the new version are targeted at helping teams share their work and collaborate more effectively. Teams can share project requirements as they are being developed and seamlessly coordinate changes. They can use CaseComplete’s own sharing technology or integrate with existing version control systems, such as Subversion or Microsoft® Visual Source Safe. Users can continue to work disconnected from the network when needed.

Doug Earl, Vice President of Development said, “CaseComplete is already known for its usability and elegant simplicity, but customers asked for more team-based features.” Doug continued, “So we added functionality that allows teams to collaborate and share their CaseComplete projects across the enterprise, without compromising the user experience that our customers love.”

Serlio President Matt Terski added, “This market has lost its appetite for requirements tools from the big players that are expensive, challenging to adopt, and don’t offer a rapid return on investment. Our customers are productive with CaseComplete from day-one. The tool pays for itself within two weeks.”

Free 30-Day Trial

A FREE 30-day trial of CaseComplete 2009 R2 is now available at http://www.casecomplete.com. Customers with an active Premium Support agreement receive CaseComplete 2009 R2 at no-cost. Upgrade pricing is available for customers with prior versions of CaseComplete. For details see http://www.casecomplete.com/Upgrade.aspx.

About Serlio Software Development Corporation

Since 2002, Serlio Software Development Corporation has helped customers reduce development costs by creating better requirements in less time. Serlio's flagship product, CaseComplete, is a requirements management tool that does just that. Spawned from the idea that there must be a better way to write use cases than using a word processor and spreadsheet, CaseComplete makes Use Case modeling manageable and effective, even for those who have never heard of a Use Case. Visit www.casecomplete.com for product information, case studies and sample use case models.

Serlio Software Development Corporation
10437 Innovation Drive, Suite 140
Wauwatosa WI 53226
414.771.1452 / 866.4.SERLIO
www.serlio.com

Contact: media@serlio.com

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Excel Integration

You can now generate reports in Excel format (in addition to Word and HTML formats).

• Create your own reports or use any of the 15 out-of-the-box reports, including:
  • Requirements dashboard
  • Project estimator
  • Traceability matrix
  • Test plan and test case checklist
• Import Excel files into CaseComplete

Requirements and UI Enhancements

We’ve added two new ways to relate requirements and integrated useful resources with the user interface.

• Requirements can reference other requirements
• Arrange requirements into parent-child (hierarchical) relationships
• Improved spell checking and auto-correction
• Integrated use case news feed

Diagramming and Reporting Enhancements

We’ve made custom reporting even more powerful and created a new way to visualize requirements.

• Show requirements in diagrams
• Increased usability
• Nine new keywords for creating reports
• Support for AND/OR in where clauses
• Improved formatting

These are just the highlights of the new features in CaseComplete 2009. See the release notes for a complete list of changes and installation notes.