RAVEN 5.2 INCREASES CONSISTENCY WITH NEW BUSINESS GLOSSARY

New release better aligns IT efforts with business goals by enabling use of common vocabulary in requirements projects

Emeryville, CA—October 5, 2009—Ravenflow™, the leader in Visual Requirements Definition™, today announced the newest version of its flagship requirements elicitation and definition software. RAVEN 5.2 now includes support for an integrated Business Glossary that enables users to dramatically improve the quality, consistency, and speed of requirements-related communication by leveraging a shared glossary of business terms. This latest release also includes a number of other new and improved capabilities, further empowering business analysts to produce higher quality requirements specifications that can quickly be validated with project stakeholders.

"Developing sound requirements is one of the most important aspects of any software development project," said Forrester analyst Mary Gerush. "When requirements are clear, concise, and comprehensive, all other aspects of the implementation lifecycle are easier and more successful."

The new Business Glossary is fully integrated with RAVEN's patented Language Engine, allowing users to either work from a pre-defined glossary or leverage RAVEN to automatically identify new business terms to include in the glossary. Glossaries can be stored locally or on the RAVEN Collaboration Space server where they can be shared by distributed teams of business analysts. The software also supports creation of multiple glossaries—for example, by department or by project type—to ensure everyone is "speaking the same language" when it comes to requirements.

"We are particularly proud of this latest version of RAVEN because the enhancements were driven from customers' input based on their day-to-day challenges in fighting for better requirements and clarity with their stakeholders," said Susan Boers, president and CEO of Ravenflow. "RAVEN 5.2 further enhances this by offering a robust Business Glossary service that, when combined with our proven process and use case visualization technology, can transform how companies address the requirements lifecycle."

As part of the new product launch, Ravenflow is offering a series of live webcasts that highlight the new capabilities. Registration for this webinar series is open at www.ravenflow.com.

About Ravenflow
Ravenflow is the leading provider of visual requirements definition software that allows companies to gain better insight, clarity, and quality in their process improvement and application development projects. Leveraging a uniquely business-driven and process-based approach, Ravenflow changes the way companies look at requirements by empowering business analysts to rapidly visualize and produce clear specifications of their business process workflows, business use cases, and business application needs. Ravenflow recently was named the 2009 Partner of the Year by IBM Rational, received the 2009 Jolt Productivity Award, and was selected as a Gartner "Cool Vendor in Application Development."


All products mentioned in the release are trademarks or registered trademarks of Ravenflow. All other trademarks, trade names, and/or product names are used solely for the purpose of identification and are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contact:

Adam Frankl, Vice President of Marketing
Ravenflow
650-823-4057
adam.frankl@ravenflow.com