Improving Requirements Implementation at Honeywell
As you read in this chapter, determining system requirements is a vital part of the development of any information system. Complex information systems have many sets of requirements. It is, therefore, essential to have a systematic way to determine them
Honeywell Technology Solutions Lab (HTSL), through its IT Services and Solutions business unit, develops software solutions for other parts of Honeywell Inc. HTSL is based in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India, with centers in Beijing (China), Brno (Czech Republic), Hyderabad (India), Madurai (India), and Shanghai (China).
In 2010, the company identified a problem: At HTSL, various groups such as requirement writers and development, quality assurance (QA), and project management teams worked independently in separate "silos." It was difficult to track project requirements and the status of their implementation. HTSL needed a system to manage the requirements and their relationships to each other.
Beyond managing the requirements, HTSL needed an application that could coordinate test cases, design elements, and defects. Requirement writers would create the requirements for software, and HTSL customers (other Honeywell divisions) would review and approve these requirements. Once approved, the development team would implement them, and the QA team would generate test cases based on them. Any defects found in executing the test cases would also be tracked.
HTSL had a great deal of experience in developing software for aerospace, automation and control, specialty materials, and transportation systems. However, they had no experience in developing software to manage the development process itself. The company recognized this deficit and turned to specialists.
Kovair, of Santa Clara, California, is such a specialist. Its Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) package is for "implementing a software development life cycle (SDLC) process, collaborating on the entire development cycle and tracing implementations back to original specs. [It] ensures that all developers are working from the same playbook ... and that there are no costly last minute surprises."
One ALM module is Requirements Management. Using it, HTSL can gather requirements, rank them, manage their changes, and coordinate them with system test cases. The Requirements Management module can also produce a variety of reports, including formatted requirements specifications and reports showing the distribution of requirements by type, criticality, source, or any other descriptor.
Honeywell already had a formal development process called "Review, Approval, Baseline, Technical Design, Test Design, Implementation and Testing." Kovair's ALM solution was customized to fit into this process. When a requirement is entered into ALM, it is marked "Submitted," and the review process begins. ALM generates Review tasks for stakeholders, ensuring that they will give their views on the new requirement. When they approve it, perhaps after changes, its status is changed to "Approved," and a task is entered for its owner to add it to the baseline system design. When this step is completed, two new tasks are created: one for the development team to develop technical specifications and then the software and one for the quality assurance team to develop test cases. Development can then continue.
What were the results? HTSL reduced rework due to incorrect requirements and speeded up development. Development team productivity was improved by about 20 percent, and requirements-related defects were reduced by at least 1 percent.
Discussion Questions
1. Why did Honeywell turn to Kovair for help? What goals did Kovair help Honeywell meet?
2. The ALM software is intended to help companies manage the steps of software development. Software development is only one of the processes that businesses use every day. What are the characteristics of a process that make a software package like ALM useful?
Critical Thinking Questions
1. Honeywell reported that it increased team productivity by 20 percent and reduced requirements errors by 10 percent. What functionalities of ALM may have enabled Honeywell to accomplish this?
2. This case is based in part on information from Kovair. Many organizations need to track software development projects, so other companies besides Kovair offer packages to do that. Suppose you were given the job of choosing such a package, list at least four criteria you would use in comparing different packages. Rank the items on your list from most to least important.