by Graham Bleakley

The rising complexity of the products and systems being developed globally is driving engineering teams to seek effective model-based engineering practices, including model-based systems engineering (MBSE). Rising compliance demands such as ISO-26262/ASPICE in automotive and DO-178C and ARP4754 for aerospace and defense are driving the need for rigorous change management and lifecycle traceability. At the same time, engineering teams must maintain or improve their quality and engineering productivity. This approach for digital engineering is further endorsed by INCOSE’s 2025 Vision along with the US Department of Defense’s Digital Engineering Strategy, which places MBSE as an enabling technology for the best systems and software engineering practice.

To achieve these goals, the engineers who create these models must be full participants in the development lifecycle by partaking in activities that span engineering disciplines, such as:

• Planning
• Workflow and progress tracking
• Requirements elaboration and validation
• Change management
• Reporting

The enhancements in this release of Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody Model Manager (ESD RMM) 7.0.1 and ESD Rhapsody 9.0.1 extends and productizes some of the features of the previous release and allows practitioners to work efficiently at scale, with large models and large sets of requirements.

For those of you using Rhapsody Design Manager, make sure you see my comments at the end of this post.

Introducing ESD Rhapsody Model Manager V7.0.1

The biggest new feature of Rhapsody Model Manager in  V7.0 was enabling Rhapsody Model Manager to be an extension to Engineering Workflow Manager(EWM) so  that  engineers can (optionally) configuration manage models in the same components as source code and other files.  As a result of this change in architecture it was necessary to modify the behavior of the EWM Developer and the RMM System and Software Engineer licences so that they matched  the license usage patterns  that were available with Rhapsody Design Manager, this work is now complete in  V7.0.1.

When you install RMM as an extension to an EWM server you have an option to either manage “models” or “models and code”. If the server is set to manage models only when using Rhapsody with RMM to create and check-in models to the EWM server the user only needs the RMM System and Software Engineer license for RMM. If the server is set up to manage models and  code, then the user requires an RMM System and Software Engineer license and an EWM Developer license. If the user wishes to create links between model artifacts and requirements  in DOORS or DOORS Next or other artifacts such as tests or work items using the RMM web client,  then they only need an RMM or Contributor license. If a developer is creating code and delivering it through the EWM Eclipse client, then they need only the EWM Developer license. This behavior matches the license usage patterns that were available with Rhapsody Design Manager- with the added benefit that now the Jazz work item system can be on the model server.

The other major change in Rhapsody Model Manager V7.0.1 is further improvements in the Rhapsody direct integration with EWM. You can now see the configuration management state of a set of artifacts propagated down the model hierarchy. This makes it possible to do Configuration Management operations on an element and its descendants. Another improvement to the EWM direct integration is the ability to accept incoming change sets directly from the Rhapsody browser when being used as part of RMM (see Figure 1). To enable this, changes have been made to the Rhapsody Diff-Merge tool to ignore changes to the metadata in the model files; this prevents users from being overwhelmed with unnecessary information. However, to make this effective you must save and republish your models in the V7.0.1 format.

Figure 1. Accept Incoming Change Sets

There have also been some under-the-hood modifications and improvements in RMM for efficiency and robustness when working with larger models.

Introducing Rhapsody 9.0.1

Considering this was short release cycle, there has been a lot of work going on in the Rhapsody product team. We have been looking at various options for modernising the Rhapsody GUI now that we completed the work on porting Rhapsody Visual Studio 2017. We look forward to sharing news related to the outcomes of this exploration at future IBM ELM events.

We have made further improvements in the HTML document generation. This includes simplified reporting for user defined terminology, so it can now work with user defined profiles and show the “New Elements” in the browser and model.  We have also added support for navigable table and matrix views in the document gneration (See Figure 2).

Figure 2. Navigable Table and Matrix views in HTML report generation

Another enhancement in this release is to the populate diagrams feature, this used to only be applicable to an element that was selected from the internal browser in the populate diagram feature box. Now it is possible to select an element on a diagram, open up the “Populate Diagram” application and by selecting “Relations from/to selected” see all the related elements. This becomes very powerful when applied successively to different parts of the model as you can start to discover relationships that you may not have been aware of (see Figure 3 below).

Figure 3. Enhanced Populate Diagrams showing the progression of application on a simple model.

There are improvements to diagram navigation so that you can set the default navigation from a block in a Block Definition Diagram to the Internal Block Diagram it owns, enabling you to drill down through a model hierarchy. It also now possible to shrink the size of a class/block, object/part so that it fits the length of the text used to capture the elements name.

Finally some of the smaller enhancements that have been completed in Rhapsody in this release include;-

• Updated support for AUTOSAR and Adaptive AUTOSAR concepts, workflows and tables
• Additional properties to control
  • Custom naming patterns for links and connectors
  • Integration of properties descriptions in feature dialogs
  • Control the format of compartments
• Open Rhapsody in Read Only mode.
• Increase the total number of supported plugins and helpers to 500 and 1000 respectively
• Adaptor for MinGW Compiler (MinGW-w64 v.6.3 and 8.1.0 ) 64 and 32 bit versions
  • This also supports Simulink cosimulation but the MInGW version must match the installed MatLab version

Rhapsody Design Manager: Time to migrate to Rhapsody Model Manager

As many of you are aware, Rhapsody Model Manager was developed to replace Rhapsody Design Manager and that day is now close to hand. The last version of Rhapsody Design Manager is V6.0.6.1. This final version of Design Manager will work with Rhapsody 8.3.1 and with ELM 7.0.0  and 7.0.1 (see Optional Programs Section). Customers with entitlement to Design Manager will also have entitlement to Rhapsody Model Manager going forward.

As an update to my last what’s new blog  post: support for Design Manager is planned to end in September 2021. Between now and the end of support only Severity 1 and migration issues will be responded to by IBM Support. Any RFEs raised will be triaged and if applicable moved to RMM.

If you haven’t started already, it’s time to start planning and migrating from Rhapsody Design Manager to Rhapsody Model Manager. Please contact your account manager and/or technical sales representative to discuss how this process can be managed.

Any teams that are starting new modeling projects should use Rhapsody Model Manager.  We’ve received a lot of good feedback on the stability, enterprise scale, and tight integration of Rhapsody Model Manager in the ELM solution. I hope you will soon experience the benefits yourself.

Graham Bleakley
ELM Offering Management

by Fariz Saracevic

IBM Engineering (ELM) delivered their second release this year, only a few months after ELM 7.0. Since 7.0.1 has come so soon after 7.0, we recommend that anyone planning to upgrade should go straight to 7.0.1. Even though this was a relatively short release, there are a number of valuable enhancements delivered. This blog covers highlights of the reporting applications including:

• IBM Engineering Jazz Reporting Service v7.0.1
• IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization – Publishing v7.0.1
• IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization – Engineering Insights v7.0.1

ELM v7.0.1 continues to improve usability across all applications with a new style for UI components such as buttons, links, breadcrumbs, modal dialog boxes, and tabs. In addition, IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization – Publishing Document Builder now has the same look and feel as other ELM applications. This is part of the ongoing task to align with IBM’s open source Carbon Design System.

 Jazz Reporting Service (JRS) v7.0.1

• Append and merge traceability paths in a single report
  • Creating complex reports is getting easier as users can mix Append and Merge traceability paths in a single report for Lifecycle Query Engine (LQE) data source. Merge paths take precedence and are evaluated first then the results are appended together. Previously, users had to create multiple, individual reports to achieve specific reporting objective.

Image of Append and Merge traceability paths:

• Support for Custom Work Item type attributes
  • Users can create reports with data for number of custom work item types for a LQE data source. These attributes are available when users add conditions and columns too. The list of additional custom work items includes:
    • Team area
    • Team area list
    • Project area
    • Project area list
    • Iteration
    • Iteration list

Engineering Lifecycle Optimization – Publishing (PUB) v7.0.1 (previously Rational Publishing Engine)

• Simplified connection association
  • Adding connection as part of data source connection association is improved now. Users do not need to manually build and add data source connections. Instead, there is a new Select Connection URL window in which a user enters relevant host details information such as host IP/address, port, and context root. When user clicks the Go button, they will be presented with option to browse and select the resource.

Image of Select Connection URL window:

• Support reporting for GIT with JSON data
  • PUB allows users to generate document retrieving data using REST APIs provided by GitLab and Github. A PUB template author can leverage various PUB options such as sorting, filtering, etc. as part of template creation with GIT data.

Engineering Lifecycle Optimization – Engineering Insights (ENI) v7.0.1 (previously IBM Rational Engineering Lifecycle Manager)

• Configure visual reporting and filtering based on the Link Validity value
  • Building on top of the Link Validity feature added in JRS v7.0, ENI users can configure visual reporting and filtering based on the Link Validity value by following these steps:
    • Open the Link Validity dialog box
    • From the Link Validity Value list, select the appropriate value, such as Ignore, Required, Optional, or Does Not Exist
    • For valid and invalid links, set the stroke property and color
    • Add filter conditions for the Link Validity attributes such as Description, Last Modification, Modified By, and Status

Links that satisfy the Link Validity value and the filter conditions are displayed in the specified color and appearance.

Image of Link Validity workflow:

• View authors can show differences between configuration
  • In ENI views, user can use the compare configuration feature to select different colors to identify artifacts that belong to different streams or to both the streams. This is valuable when users wants to visually see difference between configuration.

Image of Compare Configuration workflow:

You can find out about other ELM reporting improvements in the new & noteworthy posts here: JRS 7.0.1, PUB 7.0.1 an  ENI 7.0.1.

Let us know what you think about our latest release and share this blog post with your peers.

Fariz Saracevic
ELM Offering Management

by Michael Halder

In December 2019, the first version of ELM Automotive Compliance (ELM AC) was released. ELM AC is a new offering that consists of agile process content structured according Automotive SPICE process groups, templates and reports. The offering allows automotive customers to streamline their usage of IBM ELM for automotive industry standards. Customers who don’t want to rely on an agile process can still benefit from the offering by using the templates and mapping of tool functionality  according to their own process. Together with the release of IBM ELM 7.0.1, ELM AC releases the first update with version number 1.0.1.

A more seamless process experience 

The biggest change in V1.0.1 compared the first version is that the mapping of ASPICE base practices and IBM ELM tool functionality is now part of the Automotive Compliance process content. This mapping explains for every single base practice  assessed as part of the VDA Scope according to the INTACS™️ scheme how ELM AC satisfies ASPICE Compliance. Previously, this mapping was delivered as a separate document.

Having the mapping within the process content enables users to access it easily at all times and allows for a more seamless experience. This seamless experience gets further enhanced by additional links from work items to the related process pages. AC pursues the same goal as the rest of the ELM portfolio to continuously improve look and feel. If you are familiar with AC V1.0, you may also notice how the general appearance of the process content and landing page has improved.

Benefit from managing checklists within DOORS Next

An extension in AC V1.0.1 concerns checklists. The new release provides checklists within DOORS Next. Included in IBM ELM AC are pre-defined checklists for Requirements, Architecture, Tests and Software Implementation. Within the process content, ELM AC also contains guidance how to use these checklists and how you can add your own checklists in a similar manner. Managing checklists in DOORS Next enables linking checklist items to affected engineering artefacts and work items. Thus, users benefit from enhanced traceability and also from using checklist in a web-based tool built for collaboration.

Updates to the AC Reporting package – Better ways to monitor whether your project is on track

The first version of IBM ELM Automotive Compliance contained 74 reports. The new release of IBM ELM refines and simplifies some reports and adds new ones. There are now four more reports for problem management and six new reports for project management. We anticipate these reports will help teams to more reliably identify blockers and judge whether the project is on track.

A combined lifecycle template that supports the new RM architecture

If you use IBM Engineering tools for modelling, you may be aware that the architecture of Rhapsody Model Manager was changed to work as an extension to Engineering Workflow Management. V1.0.1 of ELM Automotive Compliance contains an integrated lifecycle template that now supports this new architecture of having CCM + AM in a combined project area. This means if you aim to use AC with ELM 7.0 or higher, ELM V1.0.1 is right for you. By relying on this combined lifecycle template, users can save time when creating projects and adding team members.

New SAFe artefacts in the templates

AC V1.0.1 adds additional Large Scale Agile contents like SWOT analysis, TOWS strategic options matrix and Objective and Key Results to the Strategic Theme artefact template. By having templates for these methods included in the tool, users are encouraged to use industry accepted techniques to improve value stream analysis and planning.

Tailor-made Service Offering for your journey to ASPICE

While ELM AC is continuously expanding and maturing as a general compliant solution, we realise that your organisation has specific requirements. This is why we defined a set of service packages to help you to understand how your project how can benefit from pre-defined ELM AC contents. You can get ELM AC installed and setup in less than a week of effort. If you are serious about your ASPICE journey, we also offer a package that includes an actual ASPICE assessment and a detailed analysis of your current tool landscape. As a result of this project, you know exactly where you stand and how can reach your compliance goals most efficient. Please reach out to your local IBM Expert Labs (formerly IBM Lab Services) representative or Judith Leick ([email protected]) to learn more about these service offerings.

by Rishikesh Agam

In this article we will explore how an Engineering Insights (ENI) view author can perform the visual reporting based on the Link Validity data.

Link Validity

The link validity indicates whether the meaning of a link is satisfied by the content of the two artifacts connected by the link. An artifact’s content is the set of fields and attributes (summary, description, and so on) that define its meaning. Artifact metadata, such as system-generated properties (creator, creation date, last modification date, priority), does not affect link validity status.

Here is how the link validity is assessed:

Contents of artifact version X + link type + contents of artifact
version Y => [has a] validity status.

The validity status of the links between artifacts can have one of the  following values:

• Suspect

The system sets the links as suspect when they are new or unknown. A user must verify whether the contents of both the artifacts satisfy the intended meaning of the link.

If you cannot determine that, leave the link as suspect and analyze it more later.

• Valid

A user sets this status when the contents of the two artifacts satisfy the meaning of the link that connects them. For example, consider a “validates” link between a test case and a requirement. If the test case validates the requirement, the relationship is valid.

• Invalid

A user sets this status when the contents of the two artifacts do not satisfy the intended meaning of the link that connects them. For example, you know that a test case no longer validates a requirement. Set the status to invalid, and later, you (or another member of your team) might change the test case (the downstream artifact) to make the link valid.

Note: For changing the status of the Link Validity, user should have permission for the Set link validity status action.

In applications such as IBM Engineering DOORS Next and IBM Engineering Test Management (ETM), users can set the value of the Link Validity status of relationships to Valid or Invalid. This information is available only in projects that are enabled for configurations.

Image: Link Validity status of DNG links in ETM application

Example: Consider a test case that validates a requirement. If you change the contents of either artifact, the status of the link becomes suspect. You must examine whether the contents of the two artifacts meet the intended meaning of the link (does that test case validate that requirement?), and likely set a new status for that link. The link validity status is updated automatically in the respective applications.

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Visual Reporting based on Link Validity

Prerequisites:

• Link Validity should be enabled in AM, QM, and RM project areas. Please refer Enabling link validity in AM, QM, and RM project areas for the details.
• To fetch link validity information from LQE, ask a Lifecycle Query Engine (LQE) administrator to assign one of the following permissions to read data in the JTS Link Validity Resources (TRS 2.0) data group.
  • Add the Everyone group to the JTS Link Validity Resources (TRS2.0) data group.
  • Set specific users to the JTS Link Validity Resources (TRS2.0) data group.
  • Create a group with specific users and add the group to the JTS Link Validity Resources (TRS2.0) data group.

Note: For detailed information about assigning user permissions, see Managing user access to data sources in Lifecycle Query Engine.

ENI enables view authors to configure the visualisation (appearance and stroke property) of the links between the linked containers based on the value of the Link Validity status.

Links between the nodes of the container in the view that satisfy the filter conditions are annotated to show the value (Valid and Invalid) of Link Validity status by changing the Stroke Property of the individual link. Stroke property includes color and width among the other properties.

View author can access the Link Validity dialog from the following locations in ENI:

• While creating a new linked container, in the third step of Show links to wizard.

• For existing linked container, right-click the arrow between the linked containers, and then select the Edit Link Validity option.
• For existing linked container, click the dotted arrow between the linked containers to go to the Link section in the Properties pane.

Link Validity dialog

In the Link Validity dialog, view author can do the following settings:

• Link Validity Value: From the Link Validity Value list, select the appropriate value such as Ignore, Required, Optional, or Does Not Exist.
  • Ignore
    • The source container is not filtered by any link validity data.
    • Links are not annotated based on any link validity data.
  • Optional
    • The source container is not filtered by the link validity data.
    • Links displayed are annotated with the respective colors for valid and invalid links.
  • Required
    • The source container is filtered by the presence of the link validity data.
    • Links displayed are annotated with the respective colors for valid and invalid links.
  • Does Not Exist
    • The source container is filtered to show only resources with no link or a link that is neither valid nor invalid.
    • Links are not annotated based on any link validity data.
• Stroke property: For valid and invalid links, set the Stroke property.

Note: The default color is green for valid links. And the default color is red for invalid links. Links that have Unknown status is annotated with connection’s default color.

• Conditions:
  • Add filter conditions for the Link Validity attributes such as Description, Last Modification, Modified By, and Status.
  • There are two different UI for System Artifact type source container and Custom Artifact type source container.

Note: The source container also gets filtered based on the Link Validity conditions.

Image-1: Link Validity dialog (for System Artifact type source container)

Image-2: Link Validity dialog (for Custom Artifact type source container)

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Sample use-cases after applying filters based on Link Validity

• Link Validity: Ignore (the default)

• Link Validity: Optional and Conditions: None

• Link Validity: Optional and Conditions: Status = Valid

• Link Validity: Required and Conditions: None
  • Source container artifact with missing link is filtered out.
  • Source container artifact with links but without a status of valid/invalid is filtered out.

• Link Validity: Required and Conditions: Status = Invalid

• Link Validity: Does Not Exist
  • We will get all the links that are not set to either “Valid” or “Invalid”.
  • This is a useful method to fetch a ‘to do’ list of links that have not been set/checked for its validity.

I hope this article has given you an idea about how filters can be applied in ENI views based on the Link Validity data.

Rishikesh Agam (Rishi)
Senior Developer – IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization – Engineering Insights (ENI)
[email protected]

IBM Engineering Requirements Quality Assistant brings AI into practice

By  Dibbe Edwards | 3 minute read

Today’s software and systems engineers face unprecedented challenges amidst rising complexity in product development. Following the recent launch of Requirements Quality Assistant (RQA) from IBM Engineering, systems engineers and C-level executives from across multiple industries now share insights about how they weave artificial intelligence (AI) into their engineering processes.

75 percent of development projects fail due to poor requirements. AI can help.

IBM helps its customers embrace the necessary and inevitable digital transformation with the deployment of RQA within their Requirements Management solution. RQA uses Watson AI to help engineers improve the quality of their requirements, in real time. This capability allows engineers to find detailed answers to highly specific questions, even across globally distributed teams. By applying AI and using tools like Watson Natural Language Understanding to leverage machine and deep learning, companies that are losing senior engineers to retirement can effectively translate expertise and industry knowledge to more junior engineers.

Requirements Quality Assistant helps customers achieve noticeable efficiencies:

• Tens of thousands of documents can be analyzed to train Watson, a feat that would take many years for a human to achieve
• 30+ years of practical engineer experience at the fingertips of all employees with the pre-trained, built-in Watson capability
• Reduction of 75 percent in time spent by employees who are searching for expert knowledge

Watch the video to learn more about  Requirements Quality Assistant
02:23

AI for Requirements Management

Why Requirements Quality Assistant? Why now?

Traditional methods of writing and analyzing requirements leaves teams exposed to error and costly re-work. It’s no longer optional to rely on document-based tools which will never provide a real-time single source of truth. Peer reviews, checklists and rules engines don’t always cut it, especially working across global teams. Leveraging AI to improve requirements quality helps companies improve their time to market and increase market share by releasing new features before the competition.

RQA is pre-trained to detect key quality indicators that are consistent with the INCOSE Guidelines for Writing Good Requirements. The solution uses AI to help engineers improve completeness, consistency and accuracy of their requirements. Teams can remove ambiguity and reliably articulate objectives to stakeholders.

When we inject intelligence into the requirements writing phase of your projects, software and systems engineers can:
Reduce errors: The requirements analysis phase takes up only 2 percent of total design time. But poor requirements account for more than half of all engineering errors.
Reduce costs: The cost of correcting errors increases exponentially as a project progresses. Decrease product development costs and delays by catching errors early and reducing rework.
Strengthen requirements: Isolate requirement issues before they are sent for manual human review. Receive suggestions for improvement based upon a score provided by Watson.

Defects in a launched product cost up to 200X more to correct than defects found during requirements.*

IBM Engineering recently introduced AI into our Requirements Management solution, a first step in broadening capabilities across the rest of the Engineering Lifecycle Managementportfolio. Modeling, test and workflow management solutions are the next to be infused with AI. RQA is currently available for users of IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next, and will soon be available for customers using DOORS on premise.

This offering comes as IBM continues to modernize and integrate ELM tools to provide customers with a complete, end-to-end lifecycle approach to systems engineering. In a recent report from Ovum, IBM was named a leader in Engineering Lifecycle Management, with high marks for its Requirements Management solution. Learn more about IBM’s commitment to helping its customers embrace digital transformation in engineering.

Schedule a consultation to see how Watson can help you improve your requirements.

*IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Read the full report: Ovum names IBM a leader in Engineering Lifecycle Management

Read more about IBM’s Engineering Lifecycle Management products