rCoach One

A Symphony of Ideas.

rCoach One is software for rule based analysis of Requirements Specifications written in natural language. It’s not terribly complicated or hard to explain, only a little different and a lot smarter. Making software requirements clear and understandable speeds up the learning process for individuals and teams. rCoach One gives you pole position in product development, a personal coach that brings a symphony of ideas to your work.

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Rule Based Analysis

A Little Different, a Lot Smarter.

rCoach One uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the contents of a Requirements Specification. In addition to NLP, other suitable techniques are used to analyze specification structure and contents. Teams can decide on a detailed level what to analyze by activating relevant rules.

Analysis rules on specification level concern…

  • Chapter depth, chapter length, paragraph length and sentence length
  • Specification contents — the need for a subtitle, classification or copyright statement
  • Readability indexes
  • Usage of passive voice, pronouns and expressions of inexact quantity

Rules on requirement level concern…

  • Modal forms used in requirements — shall, will, must…
  • Readability indexes and allowed sentence length
  • The structure of requirements
  • The usage of subordinate clauses, personal pronouns, expressions of inexact quantity, and grammar constructs that are perceived as weak or ambiguous

Store your configuration.

Activated analysis rules can be stored in the repository or saved to a configuration file, making sure the same configuration is applied throughout the whole work. When the analysis engine detects a violation of an activated rule, the engine generates an issue. Issues can be serious or minor, depending on the rule.

Get a Pole Position

Learn Fast and Be Productive.

The Requirements Specification serves as a framework for requirements writing and editing. It provides structure and gives the work a much needed context. A product development process that is lacking coherency obstructs the critical learning process for teams and individuals. rCoach One contains an editor that enables you to be productive during the whole writing and editing cycle. The editor enables you to analyze individual requirements and parts of the Requirements Specification, view all versions of a requirement, and to identify changes between Specification versions.

Start with a template.

Get a head start on your specification writing by selecting a template. The template helps you zero in on relevant contents, either you are an application developer, a business person, or someone who needs a standard specification for your work. You can use images, bulleted or numbered lists, tables and many other types of elements to structure your contents.

Write Requirements in a Context.

Requirements need a context to be fully understood. Without a proper context, the whole product development process is in danger of becoming fragmented. The XML format provides structure during the writing process and tells the analysis engine what rules to apply during analysis.

Analyze while you still write.

Discover issues while still in the editing process and effortlessly can correct them. Position the caret in the text and hit the Analyze button. The information content and quality values are displayed together with all found issues. Click the underlined text to get more information on an issue.

Write review comments.

Create review comments on the specification content to help you remember the things you want to correct or address later on. To create a Review comment for a particular specification revision, you must first store the revision in the database and then load it.

View older versions of requirements.

The editor enables you to view older versions of a requirement. Position the caret in the requirement text and click the Show Requirement Versions button. You can select all versions, the last 5 or 10, only unique versions, or just the last stored in the database.

Manage the Software Process

Achieve Product and Process Integrity.

To give an unbiased assessment of the pace and quality of learning during development activities, teams can measure the work product, the Requirements Specification. Metrics enable them to improve the contents of the Requirements Specification until they are satisfied or have reached clearly stated goals linked to quality, structure or information content. While Specification metrics mostly concern product integrity, Statistical Process Control (SPC) is about process integrity. By identifying and occasionally removing sources of variability, process stability can be ensured and performance improved.

A rich set of metrics.

rCoach One provides a rich set of metrics to quantify different Specification levels. General metrics contain mostly unweighted measurements that describe rule violations, such as the number of adjectives found, or different readability indexes. Specific metrics contain mostly weighted measurements, such as serious issue density, passive voice frequency, or subordinate clause frequency.

Find the pervasive risks in your project.

Two aggregated metrics describe quality and information content of individual elements, such as requirements and plain text paragraphs. The measurements are given in the 0—100% range. The quality measurement is an aggregate of found issues, while the Information measurement is based on other criteria. It’s a splendid way to find the most pervasive risks in your project — poorly written requirements.

Detect process stability concerns.

Process variability is plotted in Individuals and Moving Range (XmR) charts, in Trend-line graphs, and in u-charts. Depending on the type of chart, graphs contain a Center Line (CL), an Upper Control Limit (UCL), and a Lower Control Limit (LCL). Individual data points that lie above the UCL boundary or below the LCL boundary can indicate process stability concerns.

Get a snap shot of requirement status.

The Scatter graph is a two-dimensional plot of individual data. The vertical axis displays the Quality value for a requirement, while the horizontal axis displays the Information value. The scatter chart is a snap shot of requirement status, mostly intended for high level decision making.

Make observations of key values.

The box symbol summarizes the distribution of data within a data set. A box symbol consists of a rectangle that has a line extending from both ends (whiskers). The ends of the rectangle designate the 25th and 75th percentiles of the data set. The ends of the whiskers designate the 10th and 90th percentiles. The line across the rectangle indicates the median value (the 50th percentile). Based on this information, you can make observations about key values (median, 75th percentile etc.) and whether the data is symmetrical, tightly grouped or skewed.

Manage Versions

Keep Track of History.

When the moment is right, the team stores the Requirements Specification in the application repository. The repository is a maintenance free database integrated with rCoach One, used for persistent storage and version management of requirements, Specifications, metrics, attributes and configurations. The main function of persistent storage is to plot control graphs used in Statistical Process Control (SPC). The number of data points plotted in XmR-charts, u-charts and Trend-line graphs are dependent on how often the team stores their work.

View old versions.

All stored versions of a Requirements Specification can be viewed in the Editor. Old versions cannot be edited, but you can write and edit Review comments for any version stored in the database. You can also view detailed metrics for old versions.

View your history.

Draw a history graph of all stored versions of your Requirements Specification. The graph describes the date when the specification was stored and how many requirements it contains. It’s an uncomplicated snap shot of your version history.

Thrilling Details

Use What You Need.

Use everything rCoach One offers or work only with the functions you really need. If you are interested in requirements writing and analysis, you should focus on exactly that. The tool shouldn’t dictate the process you use, or how you interact with other processes. Use what works for you.

Rapid analysis.

Use the Test Statement window to test individual requirements or paragraphs of text. If you work with a Request for proposal (RFP), you can easily test individual statements to get a quick grasp of quality and information content. The Test Statement window can also be used for making rapid analysis of requirements, without having to insert them in a specification.

Any requirement attribute You want.

Attributes are assigned to individual requirements to describe such matters as status in the development workflow, priority, or cost to implement. You can create any type of attribute you want, but value names must be of the string type. Individual attributes and their values are plotted in pie charts, while a complete graph of all attributes are plotted in bar charts.

Make exports to popular formats.

Export the Requirements Specification to popular formats, such as PDF, Word, RTF or plain text. Create a CSV file that contains all requirements and their attributes, or a CSV file that contains all found issues. The CSV files can easily be imported by Numbers for Mac, or by spreadsheets that read the CSV format.

Generate reports.

Generate a report after made analysis to get a snapshot of the Specification status. The report contains information about used analysis rules and resulting metrics.