Evaluation and Selection of an RM&E Tool
Today, the business environment is constantly changing and forces companies to continuously adapt their processes and tool landscape. Applying the optimal software tool significantly contributes to organisation success.
As a consultancy company which is independent from all RM-tool vendors, HOOD is perfectly suited to support you when carrying out an RM-tool evaluation. For this HOOD can rely on years of practical experience with a lot of different tools.
It is not advisable to rely only on general lists comparing different tools to come to a decision for your company. You have to find the tool in the market that fits your needs best. The most expensive tool with the highest functionality will not necessarily be the best for you.
The HOOD tool evaluation and selection process comprises the steps requirements definition, software tool pre-selection, software tool fine-selection, and holistic evaluation. The three-staged selection (pre-selection, fine-selection, and final decision) reduces the overall effort for the tool evaluation significantly. The holistic evaluation of the software tool, considering cost, strategic aspects, functionality, and usability ensures a well-founded decision.
We specifically propose to use scenarios for the requirements elicitation and for collecting tool vendor responses. The advantages a scenario provides are, e.g., that it can serve as a basis for discussion between the requirements engineer and future tool users, that it can be directly used as a basis for interviewing tool vendors, and that it can easily handle context information.
The tool pre-selection is based on a small number of mandatory requirements. Software tools that do not satisfy these mandatory requirements are excluded from further consideration in the evaluation process. This allows reducing the effort for the tool evaluation and selection significantly.
The holistic evaluation of the software tool, considering cost, strategic aspects, functionality, and usability ensures a well-founded decision. Cost and strategic aspects of the tool are evaluated using a questionnaire, thus both hard and soft factors can be covered. We recommend on-site demonstrations at the customer to assess the usability of the software tool. To make this event as effective as possible, a representative group of future tool users should be invited and a script as the basis for the demonstration should be prepared. After this the initial use of the selected RM tool in a pilot project can help to validate the decision at low risk.
HOOD helps you with selecting the right RM&E tool to support your processes and tool landscape.
