Business requirements drive Compuware's new application delivery management tools

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Business requirements drive Compuware's new application delivery management tools

SearchSoftwareQuality.com Staff

A main cause for software project failures is that the resulting application doesn't meet the users' requirements. Either requirements weren't gathered well or they weren't followed through

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the development lifecycle.

Compuware Corp. hopes to help organizations prevent such failures by making business requirements the basis of application development and giving IT managers a clear view into the development and delivery of applications. This week it introduced Compuware Optimal, an integrated suite of application delivery management solutions, including application delivery management, business requirements management, project management, quality assurance and performance assurance.

Through Compuware Optimal, IT organizations can manage all application delivery activities with a single solution. The Optimal suite is integrated through Optimal Delivery Manager, a new application delivery management platform that provides a complete set of management dashboards that gives IT managers real-time visibility and control of their application delivery projects.

Optimal Delivery Manager provides IT shops with a business-driven application delivery management capability through integration with Optimal's business requirements management solution. By propagating requirements into all delivery disciplines, Optimal Delivery Manager drives all project deliverables and activities directly from business requirements and allows IT executives to ensure that projects are continually aligned with business goals.

"We're making requirements the focus of the application delivery system and driving the requirements through to the different tools," said Mike Burba, marketing director of Compuware Application Delivery Management Solutions.

Optimal Delivery Manager's goal-oriented dashboards can display metrics from Compuware Optimal's project management, business requirements management, quality assurance and performance assurance solution offerings. They can also be extended to include information from third-party products. By including metrics from a wide variety of sources, managers have visibility into a broad range of application delivery activities, eliminating the time-consuming effort of gathering and rolling up metrics.

More information on software requirements
Software requirements gathering techniques

Ambiguous software requirements lead to confusion, extra work

Clarifying software requirements

"What's different about what we're delivering is we're correlating all the metrics with the business requirements," Burba said. "The unit of measurement used on all the dashboards is the business requirements. Managers can see where things stand with the business."

The goal is to give IT development managers the tools to be more effective and deliver quality applications on time and on budget, Burba added. "The dashboards give them early warning indicators so they can drill down and find out what the issues are and deal with them early. It gives them the ability to manage expectations," he said.

To help IT delivery organizations deliver successful business outcomes, Compuware is also announcing a series of new professional services capabilities. Compuware is offering a comprehensive assessment service to analyze an organization's current delivery capability, and delivery improvement services that diagnose problem areas and provide a roadmap for success.