How to Choose the Best Requirements Management Tool for Electronics Development

Spreadsheets, emails, and Word documents are still the go-to requirements management tools for many electronics development teams. They’re familiar, flexible, and easy to use. But, as projects grow more complex, ad hoc requirements management becomes a liability. 

Fragmented documentation is locked in email and Slack threads, resulting in miscommunication between team members and other stakeholders. Requirements evolve, but downstream engineers don’t always keep up. When changes happen, there’s no easy way to trace their impact or figure out if they have been fully verified.

The result is project delays, board respins, and compliance headaches. Up to 50% of rework can be attributed to requirements failures, and 70% of projects that fail are brought down by poor requirements. The solution isn’t just better documents, but better systems and tools for handling hardware requirements. 

In this article, we’ll walk through how to evaluate requirements management tools for electronics development, the pitfalls to avoid, and the features that matter most for modern, collaborative electronic design teams. 

Why Most Requirements Management Processes Fall Short

On the surface, spreadsheets or kanban boards seem like a reasonable approach to requirements management. They are designed for collecting and displaying information in a logical, organized manner. Data can be categorized, filtered, and structured. These tools are generic and flexible enough to be reshaped to meet the needs of different projects. 

But the generic, high-level nature of non-specialized tools is part of the problem. They weren’t designed to handle the complexity of modern electronics development, and they lack the features that engineers and system architects need to track hundreds or thousands of requirements as they evolve alongside design iterations.

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The biggest challenge is visibility. When requirements are scattered across task management tools, shared drives, internal wikis, and chat threads, there’s no way to tell whether they reflect the latest changes or if test cases still cover modified requirements. Engineers waste hours double-checking and cross-referencing. Or they assume nothing has changed, which is worse.

The second problem is traceability. Without specialist requirements management tools, it’s difficult to link requirements to design elements and verification steps. As the project moves to its conclusion or an audit, teams scramble to reconstruct why and where decisions were made, whether they have been tested, and whether the tests are even relevant to the current state of the design. 

Finally, these methods don’t scale. The overhead increases exponentially as teams grow and take on concurrent projects. The result of managing disconnected requirements at scale is more work, more rework, and more wasted money. 

What Not To Choose: Common Pitfalls in Requirements Management Tools

Not every tool marketed for requirements management is a good fit for hardware development. Many fail in subtle ways that are nevertheless consequential for electronics design workflows, especially if teams assume any structured system is better than ad-hoc requirement management. 

Let’s explore some “features” you should avoid when choosing a solution for your team. 

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No Requirements Traceability Features

Some tools treat requirements like static checklists. They lack the ability to link requirements to each other and to schematics, test cases, or design artifacts. They may be useful for gathering requirements, but once that’s done, you’re left with structured data without the context that really matters. 

Generic Task Managers

Project management platforms built for software often market themselves as RM solutions. But assigning a requirement as a ticket doesn’t effectively support verification planning, lifecycle control, or ECAD integration. Requirements data will be collected and available for review, but you’ll have to enforce process discipline outside of the tool. 

Overengineered Legacy RM Platforms

Some enterprise RM tools are packed with a huge number of features but lack the usability, flexibility, and speed required by modern electronic development projects. In the right hands, these are excellent tools, but they often require dedicated admins, custom scripting, and months of onboarding to get teams up to speed. They are a poor fit for engineering teams trying to move fast.

Siloed or Local-Only Systems

Tools that store their data only on shared drives or local networks can’t support modern collaboration needs. Without cloud access and role-based access controls, distributed teams struggle to keep intellectual property safe while sharing knowledge effectively and staying aligned. 

The Ideal Requirements Management Workflow

Managing requirements in electronics development isn’t just about documenting what a product should do. It’s about building a shared understanding that persists across design, verification, and delivery. The ideal workflow is structured, traceable, and collaborative from the start.

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Capture and Break Down Requirements

Begin by translating high-level goals into clear, structured requirements. Decompose system-level needs into specific electrical, mechanical, or software requirements. Clarity at this stage is essential: ambiguous or incomplete requirements will cause misalignment and rework later. 

Link Requirements to Design Artifacts

Requirements should be closely tied to the PCB designs and schematics that implement them. Linking ensures that engineers understand the context of what they’re building and that reviewers can validate that each requirement is addressed. 

Plan Verification Early and Frequently

Verification isn’t a formality tacked on at the end of a project. It starts with defining how each requirement will be tested before design begins. Throughout development, teams should routinely verify that requirements are still met as designs evolve. Early verification planning also accelerates documentation and audit readiness later.

Maintain Traceability Over Time

Requirements rarely stay static. As customers revise specs and internal priorities shift, teams must be able to evaluate the impact of change quickly and confidently. An effective workflow keeps every requirement versioned and linked to downstream assets, so you can answer questions like: “What changed?” “What does this affect?” and “Has it been reverified?”

Communicate and Collaborate Across Teams

Requirements management is inherently cross-disciplinary. System architects, electrical engineers, QA leads, and even procurement specialists need shared visibility into what’s being built and why. A modern requirements management tool like the Altium 365 Requirements & System Portal supports collaboration by making requirements accessible, commentable, and reviewable throughout the development cycle.

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Key Features to Look For in Requirements Management Software

Your requirements management software should fit the realities of modern hardware design: rapid iteration, complex dependencies, and cross-functional design collaboration. 

Here are five non-negotiable capabilities to look for. 

Real-Time Requirements Traceability

Traceability isn’t just about documentation. It’s about control. Your software should let you trace each requirement throughout its lifecycle, from high-level need to implementation and verification. Look for systems that update traceability status as requirements evolve, design elements are updated, and test results are logged. Accurate requirements at every stage of the design lifecycle eliminate the guesswork during design reviews and late-stage changes. 

Cloud-Based Collaboration

Modern hardware teams are rarely co-located. A cloud-native RM tool ensures that everyone—from engineers and systems architects to QA and procurement—can work from the same up-to-date source. Features like browser-based access, real-time commenting, and role-based permissions allow faster reviews and better cross-team alignment.

AI-Assisted Requirements Breakdowns

AI isn’t about replacing engineers, but about saving them from repetitive work. The best tools use AI to help break down vague or high-level inputs into clear, structured requirements. AI assistance accelerates the early stages of a project, ensures you capture requirements systematically, and reduces back-and-forth clarification with stakeholders.

Simple ECAD Integration

Generic tools often ignore the specifics of electronics design. A requirements tool should integrate directly with your ECAD environment, allowing you to view, link, and verify requirements from within your design workflow. This avoids context-switching and makes requirements management a seamless part of the design process.

A Centralized Requirements Repository

Data silos kill efficiency. A centralized, version-tracked requirements management system ensures that every stakeholder can access the same set of requirements, with a full audit trail of changes and decisions. Whether you’re handing off to manufacturing, updating documentation, or onboarding a new team member, all the information you need is in one place.

Streamline Hardware Requirements Management with Altium 365 Requirements & Systems Portal

Altium 365 simplifies requirements management for electronics teams by keeping design data, specifications, and verification efforts fully connected. 

• Track and trace each requirement throughout the entire project lifecycle
• Leverage parametric requirements for continuous verification
• Use AI-assisted breakdowns to accelerate early-stage requirements definition
• Integrate RM with ECAD for in-context availability and fewer disconnects
• See the history of requirement changes and compare them across versions

You’ll spend less time chasing updates and more time moving projects forward with confidence that nothing important gets missed. Get started with the Requirements & Systems Portal today.