With more than 20,000 employees, Festo serves about 300,000 industrial customers in 176 countries. In the “Embedded Software Platform” project, LemonTree.Connect codeBeamer has recently been used in addition to Enterprise Architect and LemonTree. This bridges the gap between requirements management and the modelling world and makes the exchange of data much easier and faster.

Vienna/Berkheim (Esslingen/Neckar) – Stephan Reuter, Corporate Software Development, Embedded Software Platform, is Product Owner at Festo for the development tools Enterprise Architect, LemonTree and LemonTree.Connect: “I already had very good experiences with LieberLieber and LemonTree in the past. As I am convinced of the benefits of the tool and no longer wanted to do without it in my work, I brought it with me to my new workplace at Festo. In this way, I would like to further professionalise the work with models in my environment. It was not difficult to convince people across departments. Especially in the development of safety-related products, versioning, the consistency of models with different software versions and the traceability of changes are essential. With its graphical diff and 3-way merge, LemonTree is a powerful addition to the architects’ toolbox.

At Festo, the “Embedded Software Platform” is the pilot project for the round trip between the requirements world in codeBeamer and the modelling world in Enterprise Architect using LemonTree.Connect. While the previously used solution lacked performance and configurability in particular, LemonTree.Connect meets the expectations of a connector. “We see that the product is constantly being developed further. Therefore, we are in constant exchange with LieberLieber and follow the release announcements very closely. We deposit our wishes quite transparently and are informed as soon as they are taken into account,” Reuter praises the dynamic exchange process in the further development of the connector.

Dr. Konrad Wieland, managing director of LieberLieber: “Due to the great interest in LemonTree, we recently took the step towards a product family. A central part of this is LemonTree.Connect, which allows requirements, diagrams, model attributes, as well as links and references to be synchronised between ALM tools and Enterprise Architect. This makes it even easier to navigate back and forth between two platforms while the development data is automatically synchronised. We are very pleased that Festo is already successfully using this new development. Our customers can be assured that we will continue to develop and maintain the LemonTree product family.”

Each tool is used in its special area

The “Embedded Software Platform” project is of great importance to Festo, as many projects from different product areas are based on this platform in order to reduce their time-to-market, among other things. Due to several product areas actively working on the platform in the development phase, the number of participants also fluctuates, as all contributors can opt in and out depending on the development requirements of their product. It is therefore particularly important that the entry point for platform development is clearly defined and kept as simple as possible. The two tools are only used for the tasks for which they are optimally suited. “In principle, both products could cover the basic requirements, but they only really meet our high expectations in their respective special fields,” Reuter describes. Enterprise Architect serves as a flexible modelling platform, while codeBeamer is the specialist (master) for requirements management. Newly created or changed requirements flow into Enterprise Architect, and the changes can be clearly tracked at any time with LemonTree. Architectural elements (diagrams, etc.) are created from this in the modelling tool, which in turn can be synchronised with codeBeamer together with all traceability information. “With the new LemonTree.Connect functions, the two tools are in exchange and the overview is always maintained thanks to the excellent visualisation options in LemonTree,” explains Reuter. Since not all people involved in the process (stakeholders) have Enterprise Architect available as a working tool, codeBeamer is basically considered the database in the company. “Our test department or, for example, the testers from TÜV often cannot see into our models, but they need access to the data that is relevant for them,” Reuter gives insight into the practical requirements.

Further spread of LemonTree.Connect codebeamer expected

Reuter greatly appreciates the advantages of Enterprise Architect and the LemonTree family and operates a Teams channel at Festo to inform the constantly growing user base about updates and to be able to quickly answer technical questions. “The new LemonTree.Connect codeBeamer offers us many interesting new possibilities, but is currently not very widespread at Festo. However, I am sure that with each new release of the connector and the new features that come with it, the benefits and acceptance will grow for us and its use in further projects will become quite normal.“