Requirements Definition Getting More Visual - this feature article in SearchSoftwareQuality.com explores the growing market for requirements visualization and definition products and also highlights a recent research report from Forrester Research on the topic.

Visualize First, Build Later: The Advantage of Simulation Tools. This feature article focuses on the business value of application visualization and highlights how iRise is being used at UPS and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

This interview is the first in a set of articles in UX magazine that examines how FedEx is building its UX competency and practice. They're still early in what they call the UX "maturity model," so this interview focuses on the genesis of the effort and some of its early goals and successes, including the use of iRise.

Where development projects fail to meet requirements, visualization tool maker iRise sees an opportunity. The company introduced yesterday a new edition of its namesake requirements modeling solution, with a broader range of visualizations and the ability to integrate with third-party development tools. iRise 8, a tool for business analysts to model requirements without coding, also has an updated designer and server component.

iRise has announced iRise 8, the next major release of the iRise enterprise visualization platform. iRise is a provider of enterprise visualization software for business applications. Enterprises use iRise software to "test drive" their applications before building, which accelerates time to market, improves customer experience and drives cost down, the company said.

iRise 8, the latest version of the company's visualization software, tries to make it less complicated to create a simulation of a new application. It's also opening up the platform in hopes that third parties will develop modules that they sell to iRise customers.

The iPhone & iPad SimDK for iRise gives business analysts and user experience professionals a way to quickly prototype the look, feel and behavior of iPad applications, including screen transitions, typing, sliding, etc., before any code is written. This approach clarifies requirements, saves time during product ideation, and speeds up delivery of applications.

"Recently I sat down for an interview with the former Global CIO of General Motors, Ralph Szygenda, who joined iRise, a provider of enterprise visualization software for business applications, as a strategic consultant and member of its advisory board earlier this month."

"Looking ahead, he thinks the most intense pressure will center on driving revenue growth. For business IT teams, that means more focus on things like building IT into products, delivering apps that spur speed and creativity in new product development, or on apps that deliver direct customer benefits, like quicker delivery."

"From my own perspective, I believe this is a masterful bit of work by iRise, which has assembled an impressive list of corporate clients in the last few years (UPS, FedEx, GM, and many others) and leveraged their endorsements to help create and then evangelize the relatively new field of enterprise visualization. Szygenda's credibility and experience and Rolodex (can we still refer to that ancient artifact?) will give iRise enhanced access to CIOs and other top-level decision-makers."

"For government IT officials across the country, developing a new application can be a gamble. On one hand, governments need to upgrade systems to enhance security, streamline operations and keep up with citizen demand for data access. But the development process can drag on as programmers try to perfect applications for users -- wasting time and costing taxpayers millions in the meantime."

"Haworth, a $1.7 billion office furniture manufacturer, will use tools from iRise to visually plan its rollouts of SAP systems in its major offices on four continents. The iRise tools simulate how the finished SAP system will look to employees, to get them accustomed to changes before rollout. The company also uses a sales compensation application from Vertex because SAP doesn't support the complicated, multitiered compensation model Haworth uses to pay its salespeople, says CIO Ann Harten. These choices stem from Harten's decision to make no custom changes to the core SAP code. The idea is to streamline the implementation project, which started in 2006, and to make future upgrades easier. "

"'Fail early!' may seem like an odd rallying cry for banking CIOs tasked with developing new applications. But, with reduced budgets and ever-increasing demand from the business for efficiency and innovation, it's no wonder today's IT leaders feel the need for speed. New applications-initiated by application consolidation or by modernizing legacy systems-increasingly top the CIO's agenda as the banking industry faces an unprecedented level of mergers and acquisitions."

"Glickman argues the time and money for visualization pay off, and can speed up the total project by 20%, because it helps force hard conversations about whether the project will deliver information in a way that provides profitable results. New capability in the iRise software allows simulations to accept widgets, Glickman says, which let simulations use live, real-time data. "The front end [of an app dev process] is now about 'Am I selling more product? Am I opening up new markets?'" says Glickman."

"In the demo I saw of iRise Enterprise Edition, creating lifelike mockups of applications, complete with widget options and logical flow, was fast and easy -- miles beyond tools like Visio."

"The ability to dynamically and visually show what a developing product will look like generates a lot of excitement and speed in the front-end processes, the CIO adds."

"Most IT organizations have wrung as much cost as they can from hardware and data center consolidation. So where is the next big opportunity to dramatically reduce? The answer is application modernization, which often means consolidation as well."

"Key to that speedy development was iRise, visualization software that lets developers share and get fast feedback from users about application usability and presentation."

"Instead of stakeholder review meetings wasting time flipping through giant paper specifications that no one can understand, have your stakeholders interact with a working preview of the reference application."