Fujitsu Group Adopts Cloud Service for Suite of Requirements Definition Tools

Tokyo, December 08, 2011

Fujitsu began applying Tri-shaping, the requirements definition⁽¹⁾ methodology systematized for building ICT systems, to its projects in April 2011. The objective of Tri-shaping is to ensure that requirements definitions accurately reflect the needs⁽²⁾ of stakeholders (management, business divisions, and ICT systems divisions) while improving quality without having to make excessive revisions during ICT systems development.

Fujitsu has now developed, as a cloud service, a suite of tools to help generate a structure of requirements, evaluating the maturity of requirements, and examining the impact of requirements using the Tri-shaping methodology. The Fujitsu Group will adopt this cloud service towards its projects in Japan starting January 2012. The new cloud service will support systems engineers of the Fujitsu Group applying the Tri-shaping methodology, and enable them to build ICT systems that accurately reflect high-quality requirements definitions.

Background

The process of requirements definitions acts as a bridge between businesses and ICT systems and is becoming an increasingly important link. With the objective of accurately reflecting the needs of stakeholders in requirements definitions, Fujitsu has provided the Tri-shaping requirements definition methodology since April 2011, and has also been training its front-line systems engineers in the methodology for their projects. The engineers, however, strongly desired user-friendly tools that would facilitate the adoption and implementation of this methodology.

Fujitsu developed, as a cloud service, a suite of tools to help generate a structure of requirements, evaluating the maturity of requirements, and examining the impact of requirements. The Fujitsu Group will begin adopting this cloud service towards its projects.

This cloud service will be commercially available to customers in the future.

Overview of the Cloud Service

1. Generating a structure of requirements

While visually representing the relationships among the needs of stakeholders (management, business divisions, and ICT systems divisions), it is possible to generate a structure of requirements that maintains the consistency of these relationships. For example, the service enables users to identify isolated requirements in a different color or to allocate multiple candidate means for fulfilling one requirement.

2. Evaluating the maturity of requirements

The service enables users to evaluate and record the extent to which each requirement has been finalized using indexes from multiple angles. This enables users to quickly grasp the quality of the requirements and immediately identify the issues.

3. Examining the impact of requirements and related information

The cloud service enables users to immediately identify the reciprocal impacts among requirements and related information that are linked in complex ways, such as stakeholders, preconditions, and non-functional requirements.

Service Features

1. Facilitate deployment of sophisticated techniques

The cloud service includes a variety of features, such as guidance necessary for the work process and automatic checks on work status, that facilitate the adoption of Tri-shaping requirements definition methodology, which has been evaluated very highly by customers since its launch in April 2011.

2. Visualize the progress and maturity of requirements definition

The cloud service enables users to monitor progress on requirements definitions from multiple angles and provides a variety of alerts, such as delays or a decline in quality, to prompt users to address the problem. It also has features to help analyze the cause of the problem and consider measures to recover process delays. In addition, it has features to evaluate how firm the requirements are or how effective the investment will be in particular requirements, thereby helping users to narrow the scope of requirements and arrive at the best decisions.

Target

Apply the Tri-shaping methodology using this cloud service to 200 projects over the next three years.