Ravenflow Releases Raven Visual Analyzer

Ravenflow, a developer of visual requirements definition software, announced the introduction of the Raven Visual Analyzer, an integrated plug-in designed to improve the way stakeholders elicit, specify, and validate business requirements within IBM Rational Requirements Composer (RRC).

Ravenflow noted it has achieved Ready for IBM Rational software validation for the plug-in, indicating that the integration meets Rational's integration requirements for interoperability, data integration, and user experience.

"Immediate visualization of requirements is essential for helping to align business stakeholders and development teams," said Michael Loria, VP of business development for IBM Rational. "The new Raven Visual Analyzer plug-in to IBM Rational Requirements Composer provides customers with a well integrated collaborative requirements definition solution."

"IBM Rational's leadership role in making requirements definition accessible to an audience represents a state change in this industry," said Susan Boers, president and CEO of Ravenflow. "Allowing business teams to communicate and collaborate better with developers provides maximum leverage in terms of enabling business-driven development. We believe the combination of both products brings requirements analysis and visualization capabilities to more stakeholders in an organization than ever before."

IBM Rational Requirements Composer enables visual and textual requirements definition in a collaborative environment, enabling business and IT stakeholders to work more closely together as they capture business objectives and define software requirements. Ravenflow has been working closely with IBM over the last several months to develop the new product offering, which leverages Raven's patented Language Engine technology to bring requirements analysis and visualization capability to RRC.

Raven Visual Analyzer allows users to perform the following functions directly within RRC:

- Automatically generate and insert business-friendly Activity Diagrams into any of RRC's requirements editors.

- Analyze use case narratives, correct any errors, and insert the resulting Activity Diagram in RRC.

- Extend Raven-generated terms to the Enterprise Glossary that comes with RRC for better consistency.

- Highlight errors in process or use case text to help identify missing or ambiguous requirements.

- Preview Raven Activity Diagrams in a separate window, then drag and drop them into any RRC editor.

Raven users report a dramatic reduction in the total time it takes to define and confirm business requirements with key stakeholders. Now instead of weeks and months, business requirements can be defined in a number of days, accelerating project schedules while increasing stakeholder confidence that the application will be delivered as desired. Raven also helps produce higher quality requirements, thereby reducing development costs by minimizing the amount of rework required downstream.

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