Overview of Design Management

In-context collaboration

You can share models created in Rational Software Architect or Rational Rhapsody, edit the models by using the web client, and conduct online design reviews with peers and stakeholders.

Traceability and impact analysis

When you integrate Design Management with CLM, you can set up links between design elements, other designs, and lifecycle artifacts (architecture management, requirements management, change management, and quality management.) The bidirectional traceability between requirements and designs enables you to easily see and understand the impact of changes to the requirements or designs. You can also create and view impact analysis diagrams to examine the links to and from specific target elements in a design

Agile sketching

In Design Management, you can use the collaborative, agile sketching functionality to create sketches of architecture and design ideas. You can then share the sketches with colleagues and stakeholders, conduct reviews of the ideas, and revise the sketches before proceeding with formal modeling of the design.

Reporting and document generation

You can use the embedded document generation features and document templates to generate and share design documents, specifications, and reports. By using the Design Management web client to generate reports, project members and stakeholders can easily access information in the models and projects.

Change management for designs

You can store and manage different types of architectures, designs, and models in the CLM applications.

Traditional design tools store designs in files that are managed by source control management (SCM) systems. In Design Management, designs and models are treated as first-class artifacts, which means that you can import models to the server and manage them directly at the model level; no mapping of model elements to files is required. This approach simplifies the workflow for successfully managing architectures and designs in a team context.

Configuration management

You can use the configuration management capabilities in Design Management to create versions of design artifacts and link them to other team artifacts, such as requirements and test cases. Use configurations (streams and baselines) from CLM applications to manage reuse, traceability, and parallel development. Assemble configurations into global configurations so that artifact versions that are linked across CLM applications resolve correctly. Teams can use their configuration management- enabled CLM applications to contribute requirements, designs, tests, and global configurations to a larger working environment. Global configurations assemble contributed configurations in a hierarchical tree view. Use global configurations to plan and manage the reuse of configurations in the many versions or variants of your software, system, or product line. For more information about configurations, see Getting started with configuration management.

Common user administration and lifecycle project administration

You can install and configure Design Management to share a Jazz Team Server with CLM applications so that only a single user database is required and design projects are part of a lifecycle project.

Domain modeling

Design Management supports several common domains such as UML or BPMN, as well as custom modeling domains. This means that, if your organization works is a particular domain, you can share and collaborate on the domain-specific models and designs.

Client integrations

You can integrate Rational Software Architect or Rational Rhapsody with the Design Management Server. With this integration, you can access models and designs on the Design Management Server, search and query designs, analyze and review designs, and generate reports.