Per my previous introduction to Product Management Applications, this writeup summarizes IBM Rational Focal Point.
IBM Rational Focal Point - provides a decision support system for market and business driven product, project, and portfolio management. Features include:
- The ability to create an information hierarchy for product portfolios, products, and requirements. In Focal Point, these are called workspaces, modules, and elements respectively. Requirements (elements) are defined with attributes and can be linked together.
- A Focal Point database that contains all the information created and provides role-based access to users
- Besides products and requirements, because of Focal Point’s configurability, modules and elements can be used for other product management information (e.g., competitive information, market segments, etc.) with attributes defined
- Users are allowed “views” to workspaces and are able to provide filters to get to the information needed
- Various display techniques to view information (e.g., Tree, Table, Relational graph, Attribute statistics, Traceability Matrix, Gantt, History, and What’s New)
- Ability to define criteria for prioritizing elements to help decision making, for example which features should go into the next release? What risks are most severe? What competitors constitute
the largest threat? etc. - Visualize decision making via stacked bar charts analyzing options based on criteria scenarios
- Business rules to create workflows, do quality control, notify members via email on certain events etc.
- Customizable report generator
- Versioning and baselining so changes to information elements can be tracked (and rolled back if necessary) down to attribute level
IBM Rational Focal Point server is supported on Linux, Unix, and Microsoft Windows.
Click here to view a brief 5 minute demo.
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