Ontic Oren

For the past two years, at Sun and Montavista, I used Accept to manage our requirement process.  Although we’re not using it right now at the new job, I still think that Accept 360 is one of the better requirements management tools I’ve run into out there. Over the past few days, Accept has been rolling out a new update to version 4.6.  I had the chance to sit down with Nils Davis and John Talbott from Accept, who walked me through some of the new features.  

They’ve only bumped the version by .1, this is a fairly major release.  In fact, I kept asking why they didn’t just go to 5.0.  Apparently, they’ve got some great stuff in the hopper for 5.0.  Me, I’d just have called this 5.0, call the next 6, and move along.  But then, I am into version inflation.  Accept has always excelled at that “phase 1” task set.  The ability to cleanly trace requirements from customer input through to implementation is fantastic.  For 4.6, they’ve addressed some of my key issues:

• A logout button!  this is just downright embarrassing that it took them this long.  Sorry guys, but it is 2008. So now, you don’t need to quit your browser to logout.
• A whole new L&F skin.  It’s way cleaner.
• Some real agile support.

The above screenshot shows off the nice new login page.  Notice that logout link in the upper right!  Hooray, finally!  Also notice that they’re starting to bring in some useful information, instead of that lame “click here to launch product” page.  It’s clear that this is just the first step, but one in the right direction.  

Once in the product itself, there’s all sorts of small stuff that just makes a HUGE difference.  For example, they’ve moved the search box out of the tree view on the left and into the header in the upper right.  This box was ALWAYS getting obscured due to size/rendering issues.  There are a number of small and thoughtful changes throughout that on their own aren’t much, but in aggregate make this a much easier product to work through.  Add in the more modern look and feel (again, 2008 guys), and it’s feeling like a real, modern product. 

They’ve also added in some iteration support.  No screenshots of this one.  The summary is you can now create iterations under a release (i1, i2 and i3 are all part of the GA release for example).  you can then assign tasks, requirements, etc to iterations through a nice drag and drop interface.  Perhaps most importantly, you can also stack rank your requirements through drag and drop.  That’s so exciting, it bears repeating: you can stack rank requirements via drag and drop.  I had a project back at Montavista that didn’t use Accept specifically because it lacked this feature.  

Hopefully they’ll get a screencast or two up soon showing off the new product.  In the meantime, give em a call and see if they can show you a demo.  

Lest you think it’s all roses, I did take the time to harp on my favorite issue - one source of truth. I believe the fundamental problem with any requirements system remains how you keep it and your bug tracking system synchronized.  What is the difference between a bug and a requirement anyway? Nothing.  We talked in depth about what the requirements for such an integration might be.  Here’s my take:

 

• Don’t bother trying to force people to use one system.  Eng will use bug, PM will use accept.  so be it.
• Don’t bother getting all info into everything.  Links are fine.
• Make sure there’s some basic sync.  Creating a requirement should auto-create a bug.  Creating a bug should be seen in accept.
• Just focus on managing the lifecycle.  Don’t worry about the details of the bug.  

The beauty of greenhopper is it provides a trivial and simple interface into a very powerful bug tool.  You get all the benefits of a shared collaboration tool, without the pain.  Greenhopper lets you edit directly in place, use drag and drop, and basically make it all so nice and easy.