Currently, ArgonDigital is going through a requirements tool study. This study involves evaluating 160 tools against an extensive list of criteria we have developed. In phase one, I am assisting in reviewing 65 of these tools (after an initial cut) against ArgonDigital’s minimum viable product (MVP) criteria. As I am sitting in on demos with each of these tools, it has become apparent to me that there are different ways the tools can choose to capture each MVP functionality. One company was able to blow my expectations out of the water on the acceptance criteria revolving around the ability to bulk add requirements.

Typically, most tools allow for the ability to bulk add either by a quick “Add & New” button or an import from Excel. Cameo by No Magic, Inc. incorporated a feature that I felt was incredibly innovative. Instead of relying on import through uploading an excel file to the tool, Cameo lets you actually highlight and copy a specified array of Excel columns and rows and then paste directly into the tool to automatically populate requirements. It even goes to the level of creating attributes that represented the columns in Excel.

I cannot be sure where Cameo will end up in our study, since we are still trying to schedule demos, but I can say this will be a hard feature to beat in regards to originality. No Magic, Inc. may be the name of the company that developed it, but I am still not convinced that this copy & paste feature lacked magical involvement in its development.