I recently talked with Dave Locke, IBM Rational's director of marketing, about the general availability release of Requirements Composer. Requirements Composer is a requirements definition product that tries to help project development teams communicate efficiently with one another using IBM's Jazz collaboration technology. It digitizes diagrams and replaces the traditional throw-your-ideas-on-a-whiteboard method of requirements gathering with a more computerized approach, mainly to save paper and involve people that aren't in a nearby cubicle or down the hallway.

In a way, Requirements Composer is somewhat of a prequel in IBM Rational's requirements saga. Much like George Lucas did with the most recent trilogy of Star Wars, IBM decided to jump backwards in its latest product offering. Locke said that while RequisitePro, Rational's requirements management product, assumes that you have requirements all set to go to start assigning and scoping, Requirements Composer is the nesting ground for those same requirements. You can think of it as the little village on Tatooine where Anakin Skywalker came to be. Requirements Composer is where it all begins.

IBM Requirements Composer is now ready to bring balance to the requirements galaxy.