What Is Requirements Management?

Requirements management is a structured process for collecting, prioritizing, validating, and testing requirements throughout the development life cycle. It helps electronics development companies implement product requirements, collaborate successfully, and reduce costly errors.

Every successful product meets a well-defined set of requirements. Even if a product is simple, the requirements are known by the designer and will be consciously checked during a PCB design review. For more complex projects with larger scope, the requirements are often specified in an SOW or larger product documentation, and these will become part of a review process. 

Complexity is the norm in electronic product development, and requirements management ensures products meet business, functional, safety, user experience, and compliance objectives.

What Is a Requirement?

A requirement is a specific need or feature defined by project stakeholders. For example, an electronic product might require a PCB design that can support a specific current capacity. That requirement gives rise to secondary requirements, such as the need for suitable components, proper thermal management, and compliance with industry standards.

Requirement gathering begins with high-level requirements that outline the expected functionality, performance, and user experience. Initial requirements might be suggested by the client, product managers, business analysts, or systems engineers. The development team breaks down the primary requirements into more detailed secondary requirements, specifying the features and constraints to achieve the project’s objectives. The result is a hierarchy that organizes requirements into a structured format so stakeholders understand their relationships and dependencies.

Each requirement for a project should reference specific objects in the schematics and/or PCB layout, specific tasks to be performed, relevant documents and/or functional blocks, and expected conditions that would be considered for compliance. Taking requirements into account as a simple list of checks is much easier to work with than a large requirements document, which is often difficult to navigate.

What Makes a Good Requirement?

For a requirement to be useful, it must fulfill certain criteria. Most importantly, it must be unambiguous. Imprecise requirements result in misunderstandings, misaligned expectations, and wasted time.

Other essential qualities include:

• Necessary: Does it contribute to product and business aims?
• Achievable: Can it be implemented within the project’s scope and capabilities?
• Testable: Are there clear and specific criteria to measure successful implementation?

Requirements Management for Electronic Product Development

Requirements management is a collaborative process. Gathering and managing requirements depends on input from managers, electronics designers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, and other stakeholders involved in the project.

It is also a process that fosters collaboration. A comprehensive set of clear, well-understood, and agreed-on requirements allows teams in various locations with varying capabilities to work towards the same goals.

Requirement Gathering and Documentation

This is the foundational stage where requirements are identified and documented. Stakeholders work together to capture detailed product needs and specifications.

Prioritization

Once requirements are gathered, the team prioritizes them based on factors like business value, technical complexity, or time constraints. Requirement prioritization focuses project resources on critical features first.

Traceability

Requirements must be traced through design, development, and testing. Requirements traceability is essential for progress tracking and accountability.

Change Management

Requirements often evolve during development. Change management processes evaluate, approve, and document those changes. They ensure requirements are still in scope and stakeholders are aligned.

Iterative Review and Refinement

Regular reviews keep requirements relevant and accurate as the project evolves. An iterative approach allows for continuous refinement and adjustment as necessary.

Requirements Testing

Testability is a key goal of requirements planning. A complete set of tests allows the team to verify the system conforms to its initial requirements and validate that it meets end-user needs. Tests should be linked to their requirements, just as requirements should be linked to the appropriate tests, providing bidirectional traceability. 

The Role of Requirements Management Software

Manual requirements processes quickly become unmanageable for complex projects. Relying on spreadsheets, shared documents, and emails leads to miscommunication, overlooked changes, and inadequate traceability.

Requirements management software, one part of a complete electronic design automation system, provides tools to centralize, automate, and streamline the entire process.

Centralization

Requirements management software centralizes all requirements in a single, accessible location. Stakeholders can view and manage a project’s requirements in one place, reducing the risk of missing or conflicting information. Centralization improves visibility, accountability, and alignment across teams.

Automated Traceability and Impact Analysis

A Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) documents the project’s requirement planning, implementation, and testing. It links each requirement to corresponding design documents, components, and test cases. Traceability ensures that nothing is overlooked, from initial design stages to final product testing.

Automated impact analysis assesses how requirement changes affect other parts of the project, reducing the risk of scope creep or unforeseen complications.

• Learn more about requirements traceability matrices

Collaboration Tools

Effective collaboration is essential in electronics projects with multidisciplinary teams. Collaboration features like real-time commenting, shared document editing, and notifications help team members to work together effectively. The result is improved communication, quicker feedback, and better alignment across teams.

Version Control and Revision History

Version control and history tracking allow electronic product development teams to maintain a complete record of changes to their PCB design archive over time. Auditing product functionality against a requirements list is more powerful when version control is leveraged for a PCB project. Manual revision history tracking struggles to track requirement changes, often because manual revision tracking relies on manually checking copies of the design archive in order to track or audit past design changes.

With version control and a visual record of revision history, as well as proper annotation of each revision, it is much easier to track the implementation of project requirements. Stakeholders who review the revision history will know why a decision was made and can roll back to a previous version as needed. Every action in the requirements lifecycle is traceable for greater accountability and transparency.

Streamline Requirements Management with Altium 365

Altium 365 Requirements & Systems Portal centralizes requirements, automates traceability, and facilitates real-time teamwork. By connecting requirements to design elements within the Altium 365 Workspace, the Portal helps electronic product development teams to achieve project objectives faster with fewer errors.

Experience a better way to manage complex electronic development projects.