Right?

As we all know, it’s not quite that black and white.  Increasingly, organizations are finding that a blend of methods  – leveraging the best of both approaches – is the ideal.  But scaling agile methods to larger, complex and mission-critical projects can be difficult.

We’ve partnered with IconATG to help you learn how to best incorporate agile methods into a rigorous development environment, by leveraging use cases for visualization and validation through each iteration of the project.

We’re celebrating the launch of this partnership with a complimentary webinar, “Requirements Engineering in an Agile Environment,” on Tuesday, Sept. 14 at 10 a.m. PDT.

Join us to learn:

• How to effectively scale your agile development environment
• Why, when, and how use cases make sense
• How to incorporate use cases into agile development
• How to work with use cases during inception, elaboration, and construction
• How RAVEN can help analyze and visualize use cases to get requirements right

Pre-registration is required.  Click here to reserve your seat.

To learn more about our new partnership with IconATG, click here to read the press release.

• Our demo and Visio capability overview:  “Simplifying Process Mapping with RAVEN Cloud and Visio” at 10 a.m. PDT.  But you need to register ahead of time.  Click here to do so.
• Don’t have time to attend the Webinar?  Watch our two-minute demo on YouTube:  “Create Visio Diagrams with RAVEN Cloud.”
• Best of all, try it out for yourself, free, at www.ravencloud.com.  It’s live, right now!

Hope to see you all at 10 a.m. PDT.

And happy diagramming!

Check it out here.

Then, join us for a full demonstration tomorrow at 10 a.m. PDT.

You’re going to love this!

We think this is cool.  Why?

• Non-technical users and business stakeholders can contribute and collaborate – regardless of location (home, office, on the road) or drawing experience.
• It is the fastest possible way to generate Visio diagrams, anywhere.
• It enables text-oriented business analysts to move beyond requirements to become process contributors.

Don’t just take our word for it.  Here’s what BPM.com’s Nathaniel Palmer had to say about it:

“By allowing process models to be created directly from written narratives,” Palmer said, “RAVEN Cloud offers a more effective way for stakeholders and non-technical subject matter experts to contribute directly to model definition and validation, without also needing to be Visio experts. This approach should both expand the market of potential modelers, and lead to more accurate modeling results.”

Read the full release here.

Better yet, join us tomorrow at 10 a.m. PDT for our first public demonstration of this new capability, in our webinar, “Simplifying Process Mapping with RAVEN Cloud and Visio.”  It’s one short hour that could save you countless more.

But for those of us who are on the business side of the equation, and more comfortable with writing out requirements, business process descriptions and use cases, the idea of creating a Visio diagram can be  a little daunting.

That all changes next week when we unveil our RAVEN Cloud integration with Visio.  You’ll be able to create fully functional Visio diagrams in an instant, from any location, simply by typing  your process description and clicking the analyze button.

To learn more about RAVEN Cloud’s integration with Visio – and to participate in our first public demonstration, join us for a complimentary webinar, “Simplifying Process Mapping with RAVEN Cloud and Visio,” on Tuesday, Aug.31 at 10 a.m.  PDT (1 p.m. EDT).

Click here to register for this event.

After the webinar, the RAVEN Cloud – Visio integration will be available for a limited time in a free public beta at www.ravencloud.com.

“The RAVEN software facilitates dialog, accelerates business process modeling and improves customer satisfaction,” Iron Gate explained.  Click here to read more.

Find out by taking part in our second annual Salary Survey, co-sponsored with IIBA and ASPE. The survey takes just a few minutes and is open for one month only.  Click here to take part.

By participating, you’ll have access to the results, which we’ll share with you in a live webinar in October.

Participation is open to business analysts worldwide, so we encourage you to share the link with all your colleagues, regardless of location.

For more information on the survey, read our press release here.

RAVEN Cloud is delivered as a Microsoft Silverlight application and runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud-computing platform.  It provides access to Ravenflow’s powerful process modeling capability to people everywhere using nothing more than a web browser.  Launched on May 4th, RAVEN Cloud has been available as a free public beta at www.ravencloud.com.

“We had based usage expectations from discussions with other cloud vendors, but the level of user interest far exceeded our initial projections,” said David Ruiz, VP of Products at Ravenflow.  “In addition, users have provided valuable feedback, which we are taking into consideration as we continue to evolve the product over the summer.”

Based upon Ravenflow’s patented language processing technology, RAVEN Cloud finally allows business people to describe business processes or use cases in plain, everyday English.  It automatically identifies process gaps and other errors while generating visually rich process diagrams that all stakeholders can understand.  To create a sophisticated diagram in seconds, users simply type in their process narratives – or they can select one from the library of processes and use case templates that are included with RAVEN Cloud.

“Although some purists believe you shouldn’t be describing processes, but just drawing them, the reality is that many projects still involve written requirements that include text descriptions of processes, which are then drawn by the analyst in Visio or a BPMS tool,” said Sandy Kemsley, independent BPM analyst.  “For business analysts without robust process analysis skills, RAVEN Cloud can help them to provide work of value on a process project.”

To learn more about RAVEN Cloud, please visit www.ravencloud.com, or view our complimentary on-demand webinar, “Visualizing Business Processes with RAVEN Cloud,” to see how RAVEN Cloud automatically analyzes process narratives and generates diagrams from written descriptions of the process – so you don’t have to draw them.

This webinar will explain the process of a CCG Business Process definition workshop, identify the benefits you can expect from the workshop, and share the gains made by clients who have examined their processes with us recently.

Date: Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Time: 10 – 11 a.m. PDT

Register Now!

As if trying to realizing the full value of requirements definition and management through visual modeling wasn’t challenging in its own right, now you have to contend with how to acquire and use these tools. Do I buy licenses? Can I lease? What about software on demand via SaaS on the cloud? If you want to learn how visual requirements definition via cloud computing can drive project success while saving you precious capital and time, Join IBM, Ravenflow, and CloudOne for this webinar.

Let’s face it: tight budgets, limited time, and reduced headcount forces everyone into an “office tools work good enough” strategy. We all know how that can turn out as evidenced by leading analyst reports that indicate nearly 70% of all software development projects are significantly challenged or fail outright! That’s why CloudOne and Ravenflow have teamed up with IBM Rational Software to empower businesses and IT stakeholders to collaborate in the cloud so that requirements are defined faster, more clearly and with greater quality. Join this webinar to learn about:

* The latest trends in cloud computing and SaaS-based business solutions for IBM Rational Jazz software
* Leveraging the cloud for anytime, anywhere requirements collaboration for your software development projects
* Leveraging IBM Rational Requirements Composer for end-to-end requirements authoring
* Leveraging RAVEN Visual Analyzer within IBM’s RRC to analyze and visualize use cases for greater quality and consistency
* Transforming your requirements process for more successful project outcomes

This webinar will include a live demonstration of IBM Rational Requirements Composer and RAVEN Visual Analyzer working seamlessly together on the CloudOne platform.

Date: Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Time: 10 – 11 a.m. PDT

View now!