ArgonDigital just released its requirements management tool study results for 2016, refreshed five years after the last one. Between everyone on the team, hundreds of hours went into this project.  I was one of the major contributors to the 2016 study, which allowed me to participate in all phases of the evaluations. With that being said, aside from what is outlined in the whitepaper, there are additional (perhaps more informal) suggestions I would make as to how I would use this research.

First and foremost, I think this whitepaper is a great place to start. We have included the names of all 185 tools that were included in the initial phase of this study. At the very least, this could save you considerable amount of time (and money) in just determining what options are on the market. Essentially, we scoured the internet to find this list of tools so you do not have to make that full effort (you’re welcome!). The sources for compiling such a list spanned many Google/Bing searches, LinkedIn articles, Facebook posts, Twitter feeds, agile/requirements related magazines, blog posts, and ArgonDigital’s past experiences with a variety of different tools.

Additionally, I would use this evaluation as an additional opinion to the ones you are already considering. Relying solely on only our opinion may not be drastically detrimental to your tool adoption project, as we were rather comprehensive in our research, but it could potentially have you not fully consider a tool that is a better fit for your organization. ArgonDigital as a whole values the importance of visual models, so the functionality to create and link models to requirements within a tool was a considerable component of our criteria. Organizations that already have a visual modeling component may decide that storing those models in a separate centralized location is an acceptable alternative to being able to define links and create models within the tool itself. This is just one example as to how the weighting of the criteria could be altered to affect the overall results. Other sources to consider would be the tools’ case studies, success stories, testimonials, and other third party online reviews.

Finally, when you are ready to decide, I would use our criteria as a guide. Alter them in such a way so you can do a much smaller scale tool study to capture your organization’s specific needs, which will likely differ from ours. A rather large majority of the tools we evaluated had trials that you could utilize, so money should not be needed upfront in order to test drive the tools you are considering. Evaluating the top two or three tools on your own that seem to correspond best with your priorities should help make the final decision.

However you decide to use this evaluation, in one way or another, I hope it at least aids in progressing your search for a requirements management tool. It is no small feat to decide to implement a new tool into your organization. As our white paper elaborates on, many factors come into play when making such a selection. During your research, should any questions arise around selecting a requirements management tool, feel free to reach out to us.