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The Essential Guide to Requirements Management and Traceability

Chapters
  • 1. Requirements Management
    • Overview
    • 1 What is Requirements Management?
    • 2 Why do you need Requirements Management?
    • 3 Four Fundamentals of Requirements Management
    • 4 Adopting an Agile Approach to Requirements Management
    • 5 Conquering the 5 Biggest Challenges of Requirements Management
    • 6 Three Reasons You Need a Requirements Management Solution
  • 2. Writing Requirements
    • Overview
    • 1 Functional requirements examples and templates
    • 2 Product requirements document template and examples
    • 3 How to write system requirement specification (SRS) documents
    • 4 Adopting the EARS Notation to Improve Requirements Engineering
    • 5 Jama Connect Advisor™
    • 6 Frequently Asked Questions about the EARS Notation and Jama Connect Requirements Advisor
    • 7 How to Write an Effective Product Requirements Document
    • 8 Functional vs. Non-Functional Requirements
    • 9 What Are Non-Functional Requirements and How Do They Impact Product Development?
    • 10 Characteristics of Effective Software Requirements and Software Requirements Specifications (SRS)
    • 11 8 Do’s and Don’ts for Writing Requirements
  • 3. Requirements Gathering and Management Processes
    • Overview
    • 1 Requirements Engineering
    • 2 Requirements Analysis
    • 3 Requirements Gathering Techniques for Agile Product Teams
    • 4 A Guide to Requirements Elicitation for Product Teams
    • 5 What is requirements gathering?
    • 6 Defining and Implementing a Requirements Baseline
    • 7 How Long Do Requirements Take?
  • 4. Requirements Traceability
    • Overview
    • 1 What is Traceability?
    • 2 What is Requirements Traceability and Why Does It Matter for Product Teams?
    • 3 How to Create and Use a Requirements Traceability Matrix
    • 4 Live Traceability vs. After-the-Fact Traceability
    • 5 How to Overcome Organizational Barriers to Live Requirements Traceability
    • 6 Requirements Traceability, What Are You Missing?
    • 7 Four Best Practices for Requirements Traceability
    • 8 Requirements Traceability: Links in the Chain
    • 9 What Are the Benefits of End-to-End Traceability During Product Development?
  • 5. Requirements Management Tools and Software
    • Overview
    • 1 Selecting the Right Requirements Management Tools and Software
    • 2 Why Investing in Requirements Management Software Makes Business Sense During an Economic Downturn
    • 3 Application lifecycle management (ALM)
    • 4 Is There Life After DOORS®? 
    • 5 Checklist: Selecting a Requirements Management Tool
  • 6. Requirements Validation and Verification
    • Overview
    • 1 Requirements Verification and Validation for Product Teams
  • 7. Meeting Regulatory Compliance and Industry Standards
    • Overview
    • 1 Understanding ISO Standards
    • 2 What is ISO 13485? Your Comprehensive Guide to Compliant Medical Device Manufacturing
    • 3 A Guide to Automotive Safety Integrity Levels (ASIL)
    • 4 Compliance Management
    • 5 What is FMEA? Failure Modes and Effects Analysis
    • 6 What’s a Design History File, and How Are DHFs Used by Product Teams?
  • 8. Project Management
    • Overview
    • 1 Managing Project Scope — Why It Matters and Best Practices
  • 9. Measuring Requirements
    • Overview
    • 1 Identifying and Measuring Requirements Quality
    • 2 Status Request Changes
  • 10. Systems Engineering
    • Overview
    • 1 What is Systems Engineering?
    • 2 The Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK)
    • 3 What is MBSE? Model-Based Systems Engineering Explained
  • Glossary

Three Reasons You Need a Requirements Management Solution

Recently, we explored the results of a Forrester Research report that concluded that highly regulated industries can benefit from an Agile approach to requirements management. In today’s post, we’ll dig deeper into how customers in all industries can benefit from a collaborative platform that helps them manage requirements throughout complex development cycles.

According to a recent report from Engineering.com, in spite of growing product complexity and intense regulations, the majority of design teams don’t have a dedicated requirements management (RM) solution in place. About half use a tool that’s not purpose-built for requirements management, while almost a third have no system in place at all, relying instead on email and shared documents.

Only 15% of teams surveyed by Engineering.com had invested in a dedicated RM solution — but that number should be (and will be) much higher, as more organizations come to understand the long-term value of successful requirements management.

Here are three reasons why your organization needs a RM solution.

Poor requirements management leads to product failures.

Engineering.com reports that more than four out of five design teams have experienced product failure due to substandard requirements management. Failures included exceeding cost requirements and losing time to market, but most teams experienced more than one failed outcome, like a product that was late to market and cost more than expected to build.

The report also showed that organizations using dedicated requirements management platforms in regulated industries not only received fewer instances of warnings, recalls, fines and production stoppages than those that didn’t, but nearly half reported experiencing none of those problems at all.

Teams without the right requirements management tool will ship products that haven’t met requirements.

As product complexity increases, teams without comprehensive RM solutions report shipping products that don’t meet all requirements. There are several reasons why teams report that their products were shipped with missing requirements, many of which can be linked to increased product complexity, including more frequent use of microprocessors, the need to adopt different materials, and demand for embedded software.

Shipping a product that doesn’t meet requirements can lead to reprimands from regulatory agencies or even product recalls, which can permanently damage your brand reputation and position in the market.

Products and systems are only getting more complex, driving the need for the right requirements solution.

More complexity means more time spent tracking requirements. To quote from the Engineering.com report, “Many of the respondents who increased the complexity of their products acknowledged spending excessive time tracking requirements due to poor requirements management. Those needing to connect products (IoT) and add more microprocessors suffered the most, quickly followed by those needing to embed software and reduce product size.”

Image courtesy of Engineering.com

Products are getting smarter, and development teams need intuitive, powerful RM solutions to manage that rising complexity. As the Engineering.com report concludes: “It is clear from the data that the products most design teams are creating are becoming more complex. Yet, they have not thought of investing in the tools available that would help them manage the requirements this complexity demands.”

In This Webinar, Learn More About the High Cost of Poor Requirements Management

DEFINITION OF REQUIREMENTS GATHERING:

Requirements Management is the process of gathering, analyzing, verifying, and validating the needs and requirements for the given product or system being developed. Successful requirements management ensures that completed deliverables meet the expectations of the stakeholders.

RELATED ARTICLE: Requirements Management Tools and Software

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