Parking Lot - Requirements Management

 

Parking Lot - Requirements Management

OpenRose - Requirements Management

An Open Source and FREE Requirements Management Application / Tool

Direct Link to YouTube Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJGtCO_wEMY

Video Transcript : 

 Hello, welcome to OpenRose, an open-source and free requirements management application. You can find more information about OpenRose at https://github.com/openrose.

Today we are going to talk about the Parking Lot. The Parking Lot is a concept that allows users to park their requirements in a separate area within the project. To see this in action, let's go into the project list. I'm going to use this demo project called "Bay's Tariff for Personal Customer." When I open this particular project in the Treeview, we can see that we have this Parking Lot as an item type. The Parking Lot is always there in every project; it is a system item type.

To demonstrate that, let me create a new project called "Dummy Project" with the status of "New" and "Dummy" as the description. When I create this project, the first thing it does is create the Parking Lot as an item type. Now, I cannot modify the Parking Lot's name, status, or description and save it. It is simply there as a system item type. I can definitely create new items underneath, create a hierarchy of items, siblings, or further hierarchy. All this is possible because it is an item type called "Parking Lot." It's very similar to a custom item type or a user-defined item type but is always there in every project to allow people to park something on the side.

Let's go back to the Dummy Project, then go to the Project Details view and delete that project as we don't need it anymore. All those items we created go into the orphan items list, which I will clear out later on.

Let's go back to the Bay's project, expand everything, and you can see I've created one demo requirement in the Parking Lot. This particular document is a kind of public document available on Bay's website. The requirement here, "Bay's Mortgage Arrangement Fees," is something I came up with as potentially missing from that document. The idea is to first capture something in the Parking Lot and then use that requirement against an existing requirement and perhaps later move that requirement into its correct location.

A requirement here functions exactly like a requirement allocated to a custom user-defined item type. It has the same behavior in the Parking Lot as well. You should be able to see the item's details, update those items, create traceability, and see the change history. For example, Bay's Mortgage Arrangement Fees has two points: giving a discount to students and Premier customers for mortgage arrangement fees. We also have "Borrowing from Us" with Student Editions and Premier Customer Account as different account types. A mortgage is nothing but borrowing from Barclays, so we need to logically link Bay's Mortgage Arrangement Fees to Student Editions and Premier Banking.

I created two child traceabilities for this requirement. Jumping to one of those records shows Premier Customer Account details within "Borrowing from Us" and the connection back to Bay's Mortgage Arrangement Fees, which is currently in the Parking Lot.

The idea is to have a synergistic integration or link to other items assigned to proper item types while developing new requirements in the Parking Lot. These requirements are not fully defined or assigned to the project but considered for future implementation.

Once the item is finalized and ready to move out of the Parking Lot, we can decide where it should go in the structure. Considering that, I would like to put the Mortgage Arrangement Fees under "Borrowing from Us" but not under account type, instead between "Arranging Overdraft Charges" and "How Does Our Overdraft Compare?" To do this, I go to "Move an Item Between" these two items, pick up the ID of the source item (Parking Lot item), then open "Move Item Between," and pass in the source ID for Bay's Mortgage Arrangement Fees. After moving it between the two records, refreshing the view should show the mortgage arrangement fees moved from the Parking Lot to "Borrowing from Us," sitting between the two items.

Currently, we don't have drag-and-drop features enabled, but we may look into it in the future. For now, you can use the options available to move items across different projects.

Moving it back to the Parking Lot is straightforward. Pick up the ID and use "Move Under" to move it under the Parking Lot. Refreshing the screen should show the item back in the Parking Lot. The traceability and change history remain intact, allowing continued work on the item.

The Parking Lot can also be part of your baselining. Baseline is a snapshot of a project or an item type. Creating a baseline allows you to take a snapshot of all data or a specific item type within the project. We will talk about baselining and snapshots in future videos. For now, I wanted to show that taking a baseline allows you to capture the Parking Lot items, helping in auditing or evaluating how requirements have evolved within your project.

One more thing: you can move the item type within the project but cannot move it to another project. The Parking Lot is a system item type specific to each project, meant to put something on the side within the project. However, you can move items from the Parking Lot to another project.

If you want more information about the Parking Lot, please visit our documentation at https://github.com/openrose. Search for "Parking Lot" to find more details about its implementation, concepts, and how to move items and item types.

With that, I would like to conclude this video. Thank you for watching and for using OpenRose for your projects and initiatives. 

Thanks again, and have a great day!

Document Ref: https://github.com/OpenRose/OpenRose/wiki/Concept-of-Project#parking-lot