July Webinar Announced by Sparx Systems, register Today:

http://www.sparxsystems.com/resources/webinar/webinar-registration.html

Business requirements are often stored as text documents, resulting in poor traceability, lost requirements and flawed software design. The Specification Manager in Enterprise Architect 11 can help address issues of traceability while providing the convenience of a simple in-place text editor. Create, edit and review elements as text representations of objects in the model, using a process that is well understood and familiar to business analysts and management professionals alike.

In this webinar you will learn how to:

Introduction

Specification Manager introduced in Enterprise Architect 11, provides a simple document view for editing and maintaining model elements in Enterprise Architect. Specification Manager's Word Processor like interface makes it easier for the key stake holders and business users to contribute and maintain the model elements.

This document intends to peek into the features of Specification Manager and how its combination with other Enterprise Architect's features and plugins makes Enterprise Architect a powerful Application Life Cycle Modeling tool, especially in the area of Requirements and Use Case management.

The disruptive innovations like Social Media, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud are forcing the organizations to change their rigid operations and process to sustain their business. Organizations are looking to embrace the Automated Application Lifecycle Management tools to minimize the risks caused by these innovations.

However most of the organizations existing artifacts are stored in the Word processors and they face the below challenges while embracing the tools.

Top reasons that deter any organization/end user from embracing an ALM/Modeling/Requirements Management tools are 

1. Challenge of Migrating the existing documents in the Word Processors to the Tools
2. Users reluctance to move away from the word processor environment which they are comfortable with
3. Learning Curve for the end users to familiarize themselves with the tools.

 It is imperative that any ALM / Modeling / Requirement Management tools should have the following features to be more successful 

1. Ability to import the artefacts from the existing word processors
2. Ability to export the EA elements back in the form Word processors/html for wider circulation
3. Provide an Interface similar to the word processors for ease of use 

The below table list the key features Sparx Enterprise Architect that helps organizations to address the above challenges

 Key Features of Specification Manager

 Word Processor like Interface

View and Edit Requirements or other element types in a view that looks like a document

The interface enables the

• Users to modify the elements properties and Metadata.
• The Notes and the Requirement Names can be modified like a word processor.

Create New Elements using the interface

Windows Explorer like UI for browsing the Model Elements

Filter Elements in the package as per your convenience

Search for Elements that need to edited or reviewed

View the associated Details of the elements

• Linked documents
• Discussions

· Relationships to other elements

• Resource allocations
• Maintenance items
• Files
• Test
• Risks

Each indicator icon can be double-clicked to take you to that information 

Comprehensive Review Features

Create Review Document and View Associated Review Documents

Integrated with Team Review

Initiate Element Discussions for reviewing in a collaborated environment

Manage Traceability and Relationship Matrix

• See exactly which Relationship Matrix profiles exist for that package and open them
• Create new Relationship Matrix profiles for the elements you are viewing quickly and easily
• See the available Relationship Matrix profiles for visible packages

Version Control and Documentation

Manage Package Baseline

View Audit Trial

Generate Docx, PDF and RTF Documents

Print Documents

Publish HTML Report

With the introduction of Specification Manager , Enterprise Architect will satisfy the needs of the Business User who is looking for a familiar word processor like interface and the Corporates need for a dynamic Application Management Tool which with live traceability which can be used in a distributed environment.

EAWordImporter

EA Word Importer is a free plugin that lets you import your requirements, Use Cases and other information from your Word documents into Enterprise Architect as model elements.

Visit the previous Community Blog or visit www.eawordimporter.com for details.

Power of Enterprise Architect combined with Specification Manager and EA Word Importer

The below diagram depicts a typical life cycle of Requirements and Use cases flow using Enterprise Architect where Requirements and Use cases are already created in Word Processors.

Conclusion

With the introduction of Specification Manager and EAWordImporter , Enterprise Architect offers the power of comprehensive Requirements Management tool at a very competitive price.

As practicing Enterprise Architect consultants, we have the opportunity to interact with various corporates for training, consulting and providing Enterprise Architect demonstrations. We encounter the following standard queries:

“We have lots of Requirements and Use Cases in Microsoft Word ™ documents. Can we import them into Enterprise Architect “?

“Can our Business Analysts continue to work in Microsoft Word™ which they are familiar with and then have the artifacts imported into EA?

These queries highlighted the need for a standard Word importer that helps the Enterprise Architect users to

Import the existing Requirements and Use Case Models in Microsoft Word ™ format into Enterprise Architect as elements.

Enable the Business Analysts to work with the Microsoft Word Documents™ and still leverage the power of Enterprise Architect for Traceability, Impact analysis, Version control and much more……

EAWI (Enterprise Architect Word Importer) is here to address the above challenges.

*EA Word Importer lets you import your requirements, Use Cases and other information from your Word documents into Enterprise Architect as model elements.*

      What do we solve?

How does it work?

Check out the listing on the Sparx Systems website:
 
http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/3rdparty.html#WordImporter

or Visit:

www.eamwordimporter.com

A “Business Analysis Survey “was conducted by Sparx Systems (India), in collaboration  with BA Convention and IIBA™  at Bangalore , India.

The outcome of the survey revealed some interesting insights about the Business Analysis in India, which is garnering increasing importance in the realms of the Indian IT industry.

Though it was an elaborate survey which covered various aspects of business analysis in India, the below responses are more relevant to this EA user community

• Requirements gathering and Use Cases writing are still the primary tasks assigned to Business Analysts

• 75 % of the participants agree that one third of the project efforts are spent on corrections or repetitions

• 80 % of the participants advocated the usage of Requirements Management and Business Modelling tools improve the quality of projects

• 62 % of the respondents felt that initial upfront cost involved in procuring and training of modelling tools act as a deterrent

This is a strong indicator that the Business Analysts and organizations are looking for a Cost effective , Easy to Learn and Comprehensive tool to address their needs.

Enterprise Architect is the potential tool to address the above demands with

Rich Feature Set

Enterprise Architect’s Requirements Management, Use Case Modelling, Business Process Modelling, End to End Traceability and Project Management capabilities helps organizations to eliminate usage of multiple tools.

Enterprise Architect 11 provides a number of features including the Specification Manager, Charts and Dashboards, Enhanced Docx documentation, OSLC support and much, much more.  Each of these features will address the needs of the Business Analysts.

Easy to use:

The intuitive IDE of Enterprise Architect enables ease of Use and quick learning, even for the non-technical associates.

Cost Effective:

Compared to other traditional Business Modelling tools, Enterprise Architect is less expensive and can address the cost concerns of Business Analysts.

With its rich feature set, ease of use and cost effective advantage, Enterprise Architect is the right choice for the Global Organizations who have their extended presence in India through outsourcing or subsidiaries.

Please click here for the details of the survey.

Imagine that a group of people are putting together a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces continually change shape as do the spaces that they must eventually fill. Each group has responsibilities to the completion of the overall puzzle but more importantly must develop their own respective piece of this puzzle and ensure that ultimately, that piece seamlessly complements those shared boundaries created by the relationships of others. This scenario of mutual dependencies and volatility could be analogous of any organisation in the current hyper-competitive business environment.

Of course each team can communicate with others throughout the project, but without a fully shared vision, collaboration will be sub-optimal. Ideas and innovations will remain siloed within each group and should the puzzle ever be completed on time and to budget, it will have many disconnects, repetitions, gaps, and missing pieces. Some groups will produce excellence, but no group can fully share its value with the others.

Ultimately, someone must have overall responsibility for coordination of the effort and more importantly management of inherent risk, resources and timelines, all of which demands access to technology solutions. Each piece, complementary space and multi-shared relationship in the puzzle requires collaboration between many different stakeholders.

The plan and co-ordinated approach shared by each team responsible for each piece must be captured at the beginning and the ability to communicate and share progress at the individual, team and organisational level must be made transparent, simplified, and accessible to everyone.

The responsibility for Enterprise Architecture falls to the Chief Enterprise Architect. However, the creation of the architecture is a shared task. Stakeholder equity of access to enabling technology is imperative - and it must be affordable. Every role, including managers, analysts, systems architects, and engineers must have sufficient understanding of the strategy detail, allowing them to make informed decisions and to execute the plan that leads to realization of the shared vision.

Enterprise Architect provides the ultimate collaboration solution, transparently interlinking all of the individuals and groups in a shared vision, while enabling an inclusive and contextual decision history across the local and global locality of the project teams. Enterprise Architect is an enterprise requirements definition and management platform, with full support for collaboration including authoring, validating, and managing requirements, and communicating those requirements to the broader team through seamless integration.At any future time, and as the delivered solution evolves to meet changing business objectives, the thread of those original decisions can be continually reviewed, tracked and monitored to ensure complete traceability.

For more information on requirements management in Enterprise Architect, please visit: http://www.sparxsystems.com/resources/demos/requirements-management.html

To learn more about tools for traceability in Enterprise Architect, please refer to the following webinar:

http://www.sparxsystems.com/resources/demos/traceabilitytools/webinar-tools-for-traceability.html

CRaG Systems has scheduled a number of public courses in Johannesburg, South Africa teaching model-driven development with UML, BPMN and Enterprise Architect. The courses take place over the five days of one full working week on a regular basis at the CRaG Systems Training Centre in the heart of the central business district of Sandton in the north of Johannesburg.

Over the 5 days students will learn the use of Enterprise Architect for business analysis, requirements definition and system analysis using the most appropriate syntax for the job in hand. Students can choose which of the three sections they would like to attend enrolling for one, two or all three sections in any one week.

Industry best practice is taught for business process modelling, system use case modelling and system analysis at every appropriate level of abstraction based on the Business Process Modelling Notation v2.0 for business process modelling and on the Unified Modelling Language v2.4 for systems modelling. The techniques are taught within the context of a business process management (BPM), improvement or re-engineering strategy and a model-driven development process in a way that satisfies the needs of both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Enterprise Architect is used for the exercises throughout the course and the relevant details of the use of Enterprise Architect for modelling, reporting, traceability and change management are taught.

Currently scheduled dates:

• August 19th - 23rd 2013
• October 7th - 11th 2013
• November 18th - 22nd 2013
• January 27th - 31st 2014
• March 10th - 14th 2014
• May 5th - 9th 2014

For more information see the CRaG Systems BPMN and UML using Enterprise Architect Training Courses in Johannesburg page.

CRaG Systems' Johannesburg Training Centre

Future Networks and Policy at Scottish & Southern Energy Power Distribution are researching new systems and building foundations for Smart Grid Networks. This paper tells of a journey based on a vision to introduce more formal modelling methods using an IT practice to allow the company to deliver business-driven end-to-end solutions that meet business needs.