Requirement Tool Reviews

I have always been amazed at the blind dedication to some of the requirements tools that are on the market today. Some of these tools receive cult type status. In my consulting role i have use several of the most current tools and take a more pragmatic approach to tool selection. I am a master wood worker and as such have a wide range of tools. I choose the correct tool for the task and job i am doing at the time. I can’t build a book case with just a hammer.

So why is it that some people out there think that a single Requirements Management software tool that work for every program? Well i think its a two fold problem. First there is marketing hype, some of these tool companies have tremendous marketing and sales pitches. Second is a lack of experience in other environments. If you have only ever worked in software then you may be surprise when you come to the hardware side and find that we don’t manage requirements in the same way. You might even fight to try and do it the way it was done on the software side. The two are different is ways that may make it impractical to use the same requirements tool.
There are a lot of good tools out there and we should pick the best tool for the job at hand. There are some tools that are best for the software environment and some are better in a hardware environment. The challenge is when you have to merge the two. And there are some good tools out there for that as well.

This will be a series of reviews of the Current Requirements Management tools on the market from the big names to the upstarts. I will attempt to give a review that defines what the tools are best suited for.