I’m always asked about tools for modeling, requirements tracking etc.; invariably, the discussion turns to price and that’s when it gets interesting; now, some companies are spending the money to get commercial enterprise-class tools into their IT organizations, but many are not; partly, because they can’t afford it, but also because the analysts and developers can’t agree on the tools to use. In the meantime, Word, Excel, Paint (yep, you read right), and perhaps Visio are the tools of default. Good tools are important: they reduce labor and increase productivity, making analysis faster and less expensive.
So, how about some “open source” and “free” tools:
StarUML: a simple but effective UML modeling tool that supports most of the UML that analysts need; the only thing I don’t like is that the activity diagramming module is missing expansion regions (so now easy way to show repeated actions)
OpenProj: a good replacement for Microsoft Project; its files are compatible with Project and it has very similar features; not as good as Project, but you can’t beat the price
I’m still looking for a good requirements management tool, testing tool, and document generator. In the meantime, I’m continuing to use Sparx’ excellent Enterprise Architect: low-cost and full-featured for small to medium size projects that is being used in our development projects and in my consulting work; I’ve also been adding it to my seminars wherever appropriate. Perhaps more about that in a later blog entry.
This is great info to know.