Requirements engineering tools

Requirements engineering tools are usually software products to ease the requirements engineering (RE) processes and allow for more systematic and formalized handling of requirements, change management and traceability.

The PMI guide Requirements Management: A Practical Guide recommends that a requirements tool should be identified at the beginning of the project, as [requirements] traceability can get complex and that switching tool mid-term could present a challenge.

According to ISO/IEC TR 24766:2009, six major tool capabilities exist:

1. Requirements elicitation
2. Requirements analysis
3. Requirements specification
4. Requirements verification and validation
5. Requirements management
6. Other capabilities

Note that INCOSE and Project Performance International (PPI) maintain an official database of tools, the Systems Engineering Tools Database (SETDB).

RE tool list

As with most software, the vendor/owner, tool name or scope change over time.()

Note that compliance with, for example, safety standards such as ISO 26262 is supported by few tools directly or indirectly via specialist consulting.

Unlike the major six tool capabilities (see above), the following categories are introduced for the list, which correlate closer with the product marketing or summarizes capabilities, such as requirements management (including the elicitation, analysis and specification parts) and test management (meaning verification & validation capabilities).

Specialties, such as OSLC-support, are not presented in the current list, but exist for some tools.

List capabilities

• Agile: The tool supports agile methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, collaborative working etc.
• ALM: Application lifecycle management (meaning, the tool offers a full set of capabilities or can be extended)
• CM: Configuration management (software or hardware)
• ISM: Issue resolution management (or problem resolution management)
• PDM: Product data management
• PLM: Product lifecycle management
• PJM: Project management
• RM: Requirements management incl. design, specification, etc.
• TM: Test management (QA)
• VCS: Version control system
• VM_MBSE: Visual/UI/UX modeling or MBSE (Model-based systems engineering)

Excluded capabilities (limited list)

• CI/CD
• Process management (project management) (Process design, etc.)
• QM: Quality management
• Risk management
• Release/Patch management
• Safety or Security
• Variants management

List

Other tools, developments, specialities

• ReqInspector
• ReqIF - For example to transfer requirements data from one tool to another (e. g. DOORS to DOORS Next)
• Doorstop (hosted on GitHub)

Further reading

• Winning the Hidden Battle: Requirements Tool Selection and Adoption
• Evaluation of Open Source Tools for Requirements Management
• A case study of requirements management: Toward transparency in requirements management tools
• (IREB, 2015)
• (IREB, 2015)
• DOORS: A Tool to Manage Requirements
• Risto Salo et al. (2015)

See also

• Application lifecycle management (ALM)
• ISO/IEC 12207
• List of SysML tools
• List of Unified Modeling Language tools
• Model-based systems engineering (MBSE)
• Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC)
• Product lifecycle management (PLM)
• Scope management
• Software development process
• Systems engineering tools

External links