Manage CM requests and RM requirements

This topic explains how to work with Dimensions CM requests and Dimensions RM requirements after you have set up the CM–RM integration.

For details about setting up the integration, see Dimensions RM integration.

In this topic:

Requirement development

One of the first steps in a 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 file (.csv), or XML document (.xml). You synchronize Word documents or text documents with the database as requirements evolve.

You can also import requirements from other tools, such as OpenText Solutions Business Manager, OpenText Quality Center, IBM Rational Software Modeler, and Microsoft Project. For details about integrating Dimensions RM with these products, see the Dimensions RM help.

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Requirement versioning

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", meaning that the latest versions are once more shown as related to the request.

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Action request changes

The Action Request (AC) command and the associated desktop client and web client functionality works 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, all "fixed" requirement relationships are replaced with evolving requirements.

For details about commands, see the Command-Line Reference

For details about actioning requests, see Action a request.

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See also:

• Use requirements in Dimensions CM
• Requirement operations in desktop client
• Requirement operations in web client