Introducing efficient requirements management

This paper reports the experience gained from ESSI project 24257-Requirements Management in Alcatel Telecom Norway (RMATN) which was started by Alcatel´s Defence Communication division (now Thomson-CSF Norcom) in order to address problems relating to RM. The projects focus has been the introduction of improved RM-processes including requirements traceability and requirements attributes, supported by an RM-tool. The aim being to make employees at all levels an are of requirements and to make sure that all development effort was spent on activities contributing to fulfilling the system requirements, thereby reducing rework and “over engineering”. In addition the aim was that traceability and improved RM would make it easier to foresee the consequences of changes. The project has evaluated the following RM-tools in detail: DOORS, RTM and Requisite Pro. Originally DOORS was recommended, but then senior management decided we were to use Rational tools in the future and hence Requisite Pro was chosen