Motivation
The requirements process is fraught with danger from both a customer and supplier perspective: it is a widely held view that the majority of failed IT projects did so because of poorly conceived, badly managed or inadequately documented requirements.
The selection of inappropriate tools to "aid" with the requirements process only serves to compound the problem: many requirements tools seem to be over complicated providing feature rich implementations that have become so bloated that they have lost focus on the primary task of requirements capture: communication.
It is here that Xuse aims to make an impression: Requirement Zero for Xuse stipulates that "Xuse shall - above all else - focus on delivering a toolset that allows for effective communication of requirements between all the stakeholders".
Xuse Concept
The Xuse project - an Open Source initiative - aims to define an XML data model that will allow for the capture and management of software requirements from a use-case centric perspective. The project will provide XSLTs to create multiple views on this data model in a variety of formats such as HTML, PDF, SVG etc.
As all the data will be stored in XML it will also be possible to provide different information to different consumers: for example you may wish to document technical issues of why a software requirement will be difficult to implement but not show this information to the customer who is signing off the requirements. Additionally different people such as QA engineers and developers may require different views on the data - something that XSLT facilitates. It is also hoped that users of Xuse will be free to create their own custom views on the data simply by providing a new XSLT (RQ7).
What will Xuse provide?
As mentioned above, Xuse will provide XML schemas for an integrated requirements and use-case data model; XSLTs to provide views on this data model and a template project to provide a starting point for people adopting Xuse.
Xuse will not provide a GUI for requirements data entry and editing of use-cases.
Project News
Xuse version 00.03.00-SNAPSHOT-2009-05-04 now released
4th May 2009
Progress is being made towards the upcoming 00.03.00 release. In the meantime you can experiment with what the team have been up to using the latest snapshot release.
This includes:
- Improved HTML view (100%)
- New themes (100%)
- PDF for use-cases (80%)
- CSV import (90%)
- Support for vision documents (70%)
- Support for SRS documents (70%)
- Improved validation and validation report (95%)
- Trace report import (95%)
- Upgrade tool (0%)
- Updated maven tooling (0%)
% indicates level of completness.
NB: This is a development snapshot release - please make sure you have backed up your work before using.
Xuse version 00.02.RC3 now released
23rd February 2007
After a bit of a Christmas break a new release candidate is available with maven 2 support.
Xuse version 00.02.RC2 now released
14th November 2006
The second release candidate for the second milestone release of Xuse is now available for download: incorporates some bug fixes, html themes and xuse.properties for control over directory paths and filenames.
Xuse version 00.02.RC1 - out now
11th October 2006
The first release candidate for the second milestone release of Xuse is now available for download: this release adds support for actors, stakeholders, project glossary and provides an integrated HTML model for ease of navigation.
Xuse version 00.01.00 release available
3rd February 2006
The first baselined version of Xuse is available for download on SourceForge. This version represents the first (minor) milestone in the development of Xuse.
The release adds support for running Xuse directly from the command line (for people who don't use Maven) as well as fixes for a few minor annoyances that were present in version 00.01.RC1.
Xuse version 00.01.RC1 release candidate available
21st January 2006
The first published version of Xuse is available for download on SourceForge. This version is a release candidate for the first milestone the Xuse roadmap, namely the 00.01.00 release.
This release will allow users to explore the initial functionality and data structures of Xuse. The release comes with an example project template to get you up and running quickly.