Author Requirements with a Broad Range of Rich, Visual Requirements Editors

Blueprint provides a broad range of rich, visual requirements editors from which users choose the format that’s perfectly suited to each type of requirement. This removes ambiguity and makes the requirements more engaging and easier to understand. Blueprint integrates requirements authored using these editors to promote consistency and ensure that nothing is missed and provides spellcheck to remove this kind of error as well. Blueprint lists requirements together, along with their properties, in a spreadsheet-style editor showing where everything fits and letting users make edits quickly and easily. Custom views can be created and shared to keep everyone focused on specific information. Traceability, commenting, and file attachments are supported for all artifacts, even diagrams, and to a very detailed level. For example, to steps in use cases, and screen controls in user interface mockups. In addition custom requirements artifacts and properties can be created, enabling Blueprint to support your process.

Textual Requirements

Blueprint supports rich text requirements with formatting and selectable styles, fonts, bullets and colors. Custom requirement types allow you to create your own kinds of textual requirements like business, functional, or performance requirements. Custom properties let you track things like risk, priority, business criticality, or any other set of information to accommodate any process.

Business Processes

Blueprint lets users create comprehensive business process diagrams using BPMN notation. With a single editor, Blueprint lets those wanting simpler diagrams to quickly sketch their processes using a smaller palette of basic process shapes, while letting those who need the full power of BPMN have easy access to the complete set of symbols. This allows users to leverage more advanced features when needed, without having to change editors.

Domain Diagrams

Blueprint lets users create domain diagrams showing key entities in their business and their composition. Relationships between the entities can be easily created and annotated with labels, roles, multiplicity, or any other information that’s needed. Together with Business Process Diagrams, Domain Diagrams allow users to keep application requirements aligned with the business needs throughout the project.

Use Cases

Blueprint lets you author use cases in either a document-style format, or a graphical flow diagram. Whichever you choose, the other is generated by Blueprint automatically in real-time. This means that team members can collaborate on use cases with each individual working in their preferred style.

Generic Diagrams

Blueprint lets you create virtually any diagram you like using simple shapes, connectors and imported images. This means you can easily create all your non-standard diagrams integrated with the other requirements, instead of having to use another tool.

UI Mockups

Blueprint lets you create rich, compelling user interface mockups. Blueprint’s extensive user interface controls, shapes, built-in ‘screen-shot’ capability, and decorations allow users to quickly assemble high-impact user interface mockups in either low or high fidelity. When combined with all the other rich requirement types in Blueprint, stakeholders get a complete view of the requirements that ‘come to life’ during simulations making requirements engaging and easy to understand.

Storyboards

Blueprint lets you create storyboards made from user interface mockups created using the UI mockup editor. Users ‘drop’ UI mockups on a canvas, arrange them into a sequence, and add annotations to create a storyboard. You can create as many storyboards as you like using user interface mockups from anywhere in the project – or even reuse mockups from other projects.

Files

Blueprint lets you upload any file into a project and work with it as a requirements artifact, meaning it can be traced, have comments, have attachments, be version controlled, and become part of baselines. This allows important source materials like standards, guidelines, regulations, or pre-existing documents on legacy projects, to be directly managed and leveraged as part of the requirements project in Blueprint.

Glossaries

Blueprint lets you create multiple glossaries for a project, or reference global glossaries across projects. Throughout the project a highlighted word indicates it is a glossary term whose definition is displayed with a simple mouse-over. Blueprint’s instant access to vocabulary while working on requirements helps keep all team members and stakeholders on the same page.

Actors

Blueprint lets you define actors repersenting people or objects that interact with the system being defined. Each actor in Blueprint can have a custom image to re-enforce what it represents, and each can be inherited from other actors. Blueprint actors help clearly define system boundaries so everyone knows what’s in the system, and what’s outside of it.

Use Case Diagrams

Blueprint lets you create multiple Use Case Diagrams and populate them with the specific use cases you choose. Use case relationships created while editing details of the use case are drawn automatically on the diagram. All this, along with system boundaries and actors allow you to create the exact views into use cases that you need.