Successful Vendor Collaboration Deployinga Requirements Management Tool

Abstract

AbstractThe paper describes a successful partnership between Hughes Aircraft Company and the tool vendor, QSS, to transition a requirements management tool into operational use within the company. We provide an overview of the Hughes objective to migrate to common processes and tools across a range of engineering disciplines. A discussion of the difficulties in achieving wide spread use of new processes and tools sets the stage for a description of the Hughes approach for adopting a requirements management process supported by the vendor's tool, DOORS. We validate our approach with examples of Hughes accomplishments to date. Based on our experience, we emphasize the importance of a positive relationship with tool vendors. Transition achievements allow us to provide illustrations of customer‐vendor cooperation to achieve mutually desirable goals.