Tool Mentor: Capturing a Common Vocabulary Using Rational RequisitePro
Purpose
The purpose of defining a common vocabulary is to decrease ambiguity in communications among
team members and to establish a common language for team members to use when discussing the system that is being built.
This section provides links to additional information related to this tool mentor.
Overview
A Glossary provides definitions for terms used in the
description of the system you are building. Each project should have one
Glossary document.
Tool Steps
To document the project Glossary using Rational RequisitePro®, complete the
following procedures:
- Add the Glossary
document type to your project (if necessary)
- Create a Glossary document
- Create
requirements in the Glossary document
You can use the Glossary outline provided in RequisitePro if the Glossary
document type is available to your project. If you create a RequisitePro project using
one of the default project templates (Use-Case, Traditional, or Composite),
your project already contains a Glossary document in the Features and Vision package; you can move to procedure 3.
To add the Glossary document type to an open RequisitePro project:
- In the Explorer, click the project. Then click File > Properties.
The Project Properties dialog box appears.
- Click the Document Types tab and click Add. The Document
Type dialog box appears.
- Type a name, description, and file extension for the document type you
want to add. The file extension is applied to all documents associated with
the document type. GLS is a commonly used extension for glossary documents.
- In the Default Requirement Type list, select Glossary
Requirement Type. If it is not available, click New. The Requirement Type
dialog box appears.
- Type "Glossary Requirement type" in the Name box.
- Type "TERM" in the Requirement Tag Prefix box.
- Type or change the information in the other fields (optional step).
- Click OK to return to the Document Type dialog box.
- In the Outline Name box, select RUP Glossary (for
software development) or RUP Business Glossary (for business modeling).
- Click OK to close the Document Type dialog box.
- Click OK to close the Project Properties dialog box.
For More Information
Refer to the topic Creating and modifying document types (Index: document types >
creating) in the RequisitePro online Help.
The Glossary document contains terms and definitions identified during all
activities of the project and especially when you are eliciting stakeholder
needs. (See Activity:
Elicit Stakeholder Requests.)
To create the Glossary document:
- Click the project in the Model Explorer, and then click File > New > Document. The Document
Properties dialog box appears.
- In the Name box, type "Glossary." (This will
be the way you refer to the Glossary document in RequisitePro.)
- In the Description box, type a short description.
- In the Package box, either accept the default or click the
adjacent Browse button to navigate to the package in which you want
to place the Glossary document.
- In the Filename box, type a file name, which RequisitePro will
use when saving the Glossary document.
- In the Document Type box, select the glossary type you created in procedure 1.
- Click OK to close the Document Properties dialog box.
RequisitePro opens the newly created Glossary document in Microsoft® Word.
- In the Glossary document, add terms and their definitions. Consider using
aliases for commonly used terms under the same definition (for example,
Operator; see Machinist).
- Click RequisitePro > Document > Save
to save the Glossary document.
For More Information
Refer to the topic Creating requirements documents (Index: documents>creating) in the RequisitePro online
Help.
The Glossary does not contain requirements per se; however, you may want to
mark some Glossary terms as requirements, so that you can keep track of them
when they are redefined, and you can update documents as necessary to reflect
that change. Marking such terms as requirements allows you to set traceability
links between Glossary terms and product features or systems requirements that
you might want to reword after a Glossary term definition has been revised.
To create requirements in the Glossary document:
- Select (highlight) the text of the Glossary term.
- Do one of the following:
- Right-click and select New Requirement.
- Click RequisitePro > Requirement
> New.
The Requirement Properties dialog box appears.
- Accept the Glossary Requirement Type (TERM) as the
requirement type, and click OK to close the Requirement
Properties dialog box.
- Click RequisitePro > Document > Save.
RequisitePro saves the document, updates the database, and assigns a requirement number to the requirement (in place of the Pending tag).
For
More Information
Refer to the
topic Creating requirements in a document (Index: requirements>creating)
in the RequisitePro online Help.
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