IBM DOORS & DNG

DOORS Classic is the oldest and most successful requirements management tool in the world. It is the de facto standard in many industries such as aerospace, defense and automotive. Even though the architecture and the user interface may seem antiquated today.

IBM DOORS Classic is a good choice when it comes to classical requirements management. With IBM DOORS Next almost all the disadvantages of IBM DOORS have been improved without neglecting the experience and basic features. It can do everything that IBM DOORS Classic can do and has other features that are important from today’s perspective.

IBM DOORS Classic and DOORS Next Generation are still the standard for Requirements Management

Driven in the 90s by the engineering requirements of the European Space Agency (ESA), IBM DOORS Classic meets the engineering requirements of today’s complex projects in all industries.

The basic idea of storing requirements in a database rather than in a centralized document location is based on a concept developed by Dr. Richard Stevens.

The big advantage is that their relationships and dependencies within the V-Modell are not stored in separate Excel cross reference tables, but can be created simply by drag and drop in the repository. Apart from the comparatively very simple and secure creation of the links it provides the basis for a very efficient automatic generation of traceability analyses and their different meaningful views.

Coverage-, impact- and completeness analyses are elementary preconditions for efficient engineering of todays complex systems.

Beyond this basic principle (on which all state of the art requirements management solutions are based today), no other tool meets the many other demands on requirements management like IBM DOORS. Through the practical use of 30 years, mainly in the regulatory environment, a very high wealth of experience has been incorporated into IBM DOORS.

This is especially true in the supply chain environment. The exchange of requirements and specifications between OEMs and suppliers over several levels is not as efficient as with the IBM DOORS Exchange AddOn, even with standards like ReqIF.

The biggest disadvantage of IBM DOORS is its outdated architecture and user interface. IBM DOORS also has no explicit concept for the mapping of product variants. It is possible on the basis of attributes, but here DNG (DOORS Next Gen) is clearly the better solution.

For companies that have no engineering experience in the safety context, and whose projects are not too complex and can be developed by small teams, IBM DOORS can still be a very interesting solution today. The time and effort required for installation in this context is only a few hours and training in the range of one to two days.

Fulfill safety critical regulations with less effort and more satisfaction with IBM DOORS

One of the basic requirements of almost all safety standards is traceability. It serves three purposes:

Coverage analyses (If tests are available for all requirements, all requirements are considered in the implementation …)
Impact Analysis – What are the dependencies of possible changes, control of change impacts during implementation and testing, have all necessary tests been performed after a change and are they passed?
Review Management – Documentation and management of when and by whom changes were reviewed.

Creating the links of dependencies is one side of the coin and essentially a painstaking task. Generating the different meaningful views based on the link relationships is a completely different one. Another precondition to ensure safety compliance is leveraging the ability to create strict link rules. Until today IBM DOORS Classic and IBM DOORS Next are the market leading tool in this respect.

Link your requirements easily with drag and drop and auto generate the different traceability views with the traceability wizard.

One of the benefits of the IBM Jazz platform is its OSLC based linking and tracing capabilities. A simple mouse-over allows the user to view linked artefacts at any time live from his engineering perspective/domain into any other.

Ensure that the effects of changes are considered across engineering domains, teams and product variants by leveraging the power of IBM DOORS

Maintain control over change-impacts throughout your entire system and engineering domains by leveraging the power of automated suspect link creation.

Good documentation is always changing and evolving. Snapshots on the timeline help you analyse and manage changes.

Manage product features and modifications across variants and versions based on Global Configuration.

More about IBM DOORS and DNG

Licensing & Pricing

There are various licensing options and price models for IBM products, with which the most diverse situations and use cases can be addressed very flexibly.
Find the best price and license model for your team and project.

Migration from IBM DOORS to DNG

Best practices and information on migration solutions to move projects and data from IBM DOORS Classic to DOORS Next. Find the best solution for your team to move to the next generation of requirements management.