One of the first steps in every project is the specification of requirements. Tracking these requirements across different organizations and understanding the impact that various requirements have on cost, schedule, and time-to-market can have a dramatic effect on project success.
Dimensions RM stores requirements in a database. The requirements for a project can come from various sources, such as customers, management, marketing, quality assurance (QA), support, and field personnel. The requirements can be entered directly into Dimensions RM, or imported from a Microsoft® Word document, plain text document, comma separated value (CSV) file, or XML document (.xml) file. You synchronize Word documents or text documents with the database as requirements evolve.
You can also import requirements from other tools, such as Serena® Business Manager (formerly known as Serena® Business Mashups and TeamTrack), IBM® Rational® Software Modeler, HP Quality Center, and Microsoft® Project. For more information about the integration of Dimensions RM with these products, see the Dimensions RM documentation set.
Dimensions RM requirements are objects that may evolve. In a Dimensions RM container (baseline, collection, document, or snapshot), updates may be made to a requirement, which essentially creates new versions of the requirement.
Because of this behavior, Dimensions CM prevents the display of the latest version of a requirement when the change request enters certain lifecycle phases (or statuses). For example, when a request is closed, it no longer makes sense for the related requirements to evolve; in this example case, the relationships must be fixed to the specific versions available at the time the request was closed (actioned to its final lifecycle state). This "fixing" of relationships mean that, once a request has been closed, the related requirements no longer reflect the latest versions in the containers.
Fixing takes place when a request enters the following phases/statuses:
Final Status/Phase.
Frozen Phase (but only when CM Rules are enabled).
Off Normal Status.
When a change request is actioned back to a normal lifecycle status, these relationships are "unfixed"; that is, the latest versions are once more shown as related to the request.
Beginning with Dimensions CM 10.1.3, the Action Request (AC) command (see the Command-Line Reference Guide) and the associated desktop client and web client functionality (see Actioning a Request) have been changed as follows:
When a request enters a final/frozen/off normal phase, all relationships representing an evolving requirement are replaced with the latest ObjectId for that object in the originating collection (that is, the collection specified when the requirement and request were related).
When a change leaves the frozen phase, then all "fixed" requirement relationships are replaced with evolving requirements.
IMPORTANT! When requirements are changed using the Dimensions RM "Update" function, the changes will be shown against Dimensions CM requests that are frozen/closed/off normal; however, changes made using the Dimensions RM "Replace" function will not be shown against Dimensions CM request that are frozen/closed/off normal.
Related Topics
Prerequisites for the Dimensions CM to Dimensions RM Integration