Requirements management software

Hi guys,

I would like to discuss a certain aspect of project collaboration - requirements management.

When I have to deal with a large project it becomes hard to manage all the data via email so I need some service to help me organize/discuss/refine information I receive from my customers.

There are well-know tools like Basecamp but they do not emphasize requirements management process. I.e. I can get some kind of trivial feature like Writeboard in Basecamp or general purpose wiki in Redmine but I always wanted something built exclusively for RQ management.

Here is a list of my wishes to such software:
1) Web based hosted solution (so I do not have to install\maintain anything)
2) Relatively cheap ($15-$30 per month will do)
3) Keeping RQ document as a list of separate RQs that can be referenced by unique Id
4) Keeping history of changes
5) Fast and accurate full-text search through all RQs/versions
6) Tags/labels for RQs
7) Baselining of RQ document (i.e. a snapshot of the current RQs list)
8) Built-in chat/comments system to negotiate on RQs with customer
9) Integration with email
10) Ability to store attachments
11) Ability to export a list of RQs to PDF or Word document
12) [Most important] Extremely simple UI so non-techie person (my customers) can use it

To summarize I need something like Basecamp but targeted specifically to requirements gathering. I.e. I need to easily collect/organize/discuss customers wishes. There is no need for built-in issues tracker, calendar and other features commonly found in Basecamp-alike services.

Here is my questions to you:

Do you know any software that matches my requirements?
What tools besides email do you use to collaborate with the client?
How do you keep your project requirements?

Aku

Two questions:

1. How is "requirements management" (a term I've never heard before) different from good-old garden variety good project management?

2. Is this list of what your looking for ranked in order of importance to you?

It does seem to me that any online management program needs an infusion of human energy at some point. Otherwise. . . why shouldn't you just be replaced by a machine?

Lowengard,

I am talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirements_management

It is a stage when you collect and organize client wishes before creating a project plan.

If "requirements management" sounds confusing you can replace it with "project collaboration".

The problem is that most project management services provide you with task tracking but there is no easy way to write down the origin of these tasks.

Here is a simple example of the problem: there are 100 projects you discussed with your clients via email. Some projects have 100+ emails with various information. Now imagine you need to refer to some specific agreement you made with a client 3 months ago. I guess you will agree that it is not easy to do. You need some way to keep this information organized.

The list I provided contains equally important properties of the system I need.

100 projects with 1 client, or 100 projects with 10 --or 20 clients?

I'm still not convinced--despite the existence of a wikipedia entry--that this isn't a question of needing better overall management. And good project collaboration (something I have taught) might mean that you assign someone on the client side to be the keeper and indexer of the hundreds of emails. If you're really dealing with that much information you have to choose what you micromanage. ;^)

But as a management adviser I'm more concerned about your assertion that everything on your list is of equal importance. A colleague of mine is fond of reminding clients "Fast, Cheap, Good: Choose the two you prefer because you can't have them all." And I think this is important here: if you're actually price sensitive, then you shouldn't expect to get everything you want exactly as you want it. If price doesn't matter, why don't you find someone to design this ur-system for you? But then you might not meet the "I don't want to know about maintenance and installation" criterion.

Number of clients does not matter, volume of information does. Hiring a dedictated person for speaking with the client will make everything more complicated unless you are a large company and charge clients for conducting a workshop.

Note that I am speaking about small business (1-10 people) which means a lot of small projects (0.5-3 months duration)

If somebody has to collect information then there should be proper tools for making it easier.

Regarding "fast, cheap, good" it is just a demagogy. GMail for business it dirt cheap and great at the same time. I do not feel I need to pay $5000 for "enterpise" system if there are modern SaaS alternatives with $30/month subscription.

The problem here is that this specific market niche does not have anything decent (or I did not find it yet)

I would appreciate if you share you vision on good management in relation to keeping and organizing information. How would you solve the problem (finding some piece of information after 3 months) from my previous post? What approach will you take to not have this issue in a first place?

The wikipedia article you linked to lists a number of tools for this. If you've reviewed that list what issues do you see with those tools? While their prices are above what you named, http://www.jamasoftware.com/ seems like a decent piece of software.

To be honest the price you named is far too low to expect for a niche market. You need to look at your potential ROI and see if this product will make or lose money. If it will make money the choice is obvious, if not chances are you really aren't loosing that much money the way things are going now. You have a very long list of requirements, as Lowengard said you aren't going to get exactly what you want for a low price.

JamaSoftware's Contour looks great but at 70$ per user it is not a kind of software I can use to manage hundreds of leads. A simpler version without approval worflow, tracebility etc. would be an ideal solution for me.

Basecamp's price is around $25-150 per month depending on how many users. You might want to use this project management software as it's very easy to use and very user-friendly. No need to take a lot of time to learn it.

You might also be interested with 5Pm, smartsheet or central desktop.
5Pm - $18 per month for 5 users
Smartsheet - $10-150 per month
Central Desktop - $0-99 per month

Check out more alternatives here: <URL snipped> with its features and prices listed in a table so you can compare them with the others.