Requirement management in Enterprise Architect and Excel

Question

I'm starting a new project and want to do my requirement management with Enterprise Architect.

It look really nice to define requirements, associate use cases, design elements, test and so on, all in one software.

I succeeded in creating a profile that let met drag custom requirement with predefined tagged value for enterprise stuff.

My problem is that the requirements must be manage at 3 level. The team, the management and the client. The management and the client both communicate with Excel.

My question is, it is possible to do something like: - Create requirements diagram in EA with predefined tag value - Export requirements in Excel (with predefined tag value) - I haven't been able to export my predefined tagged value. - Modify the excel file - Import from excel and update the requirements in EA.

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this using CSV Import/Export.

The ability to include tagged values in CSV import/export was added fairly recently, so make sure you're running an up-to-date EA (at the time of writing, the latest release is 9.3.931).

Assuming you've got all the requirements in a single package, proceed as follows:

1. Right-click the package in the project browser, select Import / Export -> CSV Import / Export.
2. Click the Edit / New button in the upper right corner of the dialog that opens.
3. From the Available Fields list, select GUID, Type, Name, Notes and any other fields you use (eg Difficulty).
4. Click Add Tagged Value Field -> Value.
5. If the tag you're after is defined in a properly deployed UML profile, you can find it in the list. Otherwise, click the Other Element button and navigate to one of your requirements; this will allow you to select tags created on-the-fly as well.
6. Back in the Specification dialog, make sure you've selected the correct delimiter (upper right corner) and set a name for the specification. The other dialog options can be left empty but it's probably a good idea to specify Requirement as the default type. Save the specification and close the dialog (you only have to create the specification once, of course).
7. In the Import/Export dialog, specify a filename and select Export. Click Run to export the requirements.

To reimport, simply select to Import rather than Export in the CSV Import / Export dialog.

The two crucial fields are the GUID and the Type. You may want to hide these columns when you send the requirements to management and client, and inform them that they shouldn't tamper with those.

The GUID is the unique identifier. As long as that's in the file, EA can reimport the file and update your modelled requirements.

The Type needs to be set to Requirement for any new requirements that are added in the file. You don't need to set a GUID. EA will ask you during the import whether to create one or ignore the entry completely; tell it to create one and the requirement will be added to your model. But the Type field has to be set or EA won't know what to create.

What EA won't do is delete requirements from your model if they've been removed from the file. This is something you'll have to manage manually. (And if you're working on a project where the number of requirements actually decreases over time, please give me a call.)

If your requirements are in several packages you can still import / export them this way, but it's a little bit more complex: you'll need to set the Preserve Hierarchy option in the CSV specification and use a couple of special columns, but that's pretty well described in the help file.