Breadcrumbs - Requirements Management

 

Breadcrumbs - Requirements Management 

OpenRose - Requirements Management

An Open Source and FREE Requirements Management Application / Tool

Direct Link to YouTube Video : Breadcrumbs - Requirements Management

Video Transcript :

Welcome to OpenRose, an open-source and free requirements management application. Find more information at GitHub - OpenRose.

Today, we are going to talk about breadcrumbs. The question that comes to mind is how requirements management and breadcrumbs are related in anyways. Let me start by explaining that breadcrumbs are a concept in software applications whereby we can show how far deep in the hierarchy we have gone when working with structured data.

OpenRose has two different possibilities for using breadcrumbs: as a technical enabler or as a visualization of data to indicate where you are in the Project or Baseline hierarchy.

Let me start by going into our projects. Here we have the "Barclays terrif for Personal Customers" project, which I have been using for demo purposes. If I go to the Tree View, we can see all the information about existing data laid out in a nicely structured manner. We know that L1, L2, and L3 indicate the level. So, the project is at L1, the Item Type is at L2, a Requirement is at L3, and a Sub-Requirement (child requirement) is at level four. Likewise, if I go further down, the deepest level in my hierarchical structure is level five.

When I open the Barclays Personal Overdraft in the Tree View, I can see all its parent items and the level at which it is currently sitting. However, if I switch over to the Details View, I need to look at the breadcrumbs information available at the top to know where in the hierarchy this particular requirement is sitting. This indicates that I am at level five because my project is at level one, the Item Type is at level two, one of the requirements below the Item Type is at level three, then I have a level four requirement, and I am personally sitting at level five. This information helps us understand the contextual hierarchical information about this particular requirement.

I can open this requirement and start editing it while still having access to the breadcrumbs. I can jump out to any parent level. For example, I am going to the "How Does Our Overdraft Compare" requirement. The same information about the breadcrumbs is also available in baseline snapshots. Snapshots are nothing but a picture or data information captured from the project or Item Type at any given point in time, hence called a snapshot or a baseline.

If I go to the project again and look at the details, we can see all the baselines we have taken in the past. We have two baselines: January and February baselines, coming from the entire project itself. It is a snapshot of all data from the project, including loans for January and loans for February, which are snapshots taken for a section of the project based on the Item Type.

Let's jump over to the January baseline. Here, we can see the detail view and switch over to Tree View if required. The breadcrumbs feature is available within the details view. Baselines are always sitting under the project. So, as you can see, my project is at level one, and baselines are at level two, meaning Item Types are at level three.

Let's jump further down into a sub-item under a requirement linked to the Item Type. The structure indicates that Item Types are at level three, and actual items, which are requirements, are at levels four, five, and further down. Since the snapshot is a read-only view of my data from a given point in time, I am not able to change the structural information. That means if I go back to my Item Type within the baseline, I don't see any data or options to change the hierarchical levels or order of sub-items underneath.

The same information will be visible if I go to the project detail view. Here, the difference is that I am inside the project view, where I can use the up and down buttons to change the hierarchical structure for the given sub-items, items, or different types of data sitting under a specific parent. This information is shared so that we understand that when you make certain changes to the structure or move items using "Move Under," "Move Between," or "Move Item Types Under" different data, the overall level of that item could easily change. In that context, we are going to rebuild the breadcrumbs, which is a dynamic view sitting on top of the current status of your data in the project or the past status of your data based on the snapshot taken from that point in time.

One thing I want to show is that breadcrumbs also allow us to see information about the scoping of the baseline. Let's go back to the baseline view, which is available in the details view of the project. I will open the January baseline. One thing we can do within January is to include and exclude requirements and all its children from the given scope of the baseline or snapshot. In this case, I would like to exclude the parent item, which is "If you have an older account" requirement, and that will automatically trigger the exclusion or descope of all its child items. When I do that, we can see all the children are descoped. When you jump into a specific child, you can see different colors indicating that this particular item is excluded from within the scope of the given baseline. 

Jump over to the Tree View, and you can see the same information indicated with a red color cross in the tree view, while similar information is indicated with a red color icon and name in the breadcrumbs view.

That's the overview of how breadcrumbs, which is an element or a UI component, show information about the hierarchical structure given the context of the item that you are currently in. 

With that, I would like to thank you for watching this video. Please share this video with others and have a great day. Bye-bye!