RequisitePro and DOORS

Tool Foundations

Requirements Management Tool

Software that captures, organizes, versions, and traces requirements in a central repository, enabling teams to manage scope and assess the impact of change across a project's lifecycle.

IBM Rational RequisitePro

A requirements management tool that links requirements documented in Word-style documents to a central database, maintaining requirement attributes and traceability for scope and change management.

IBM DOORS

A widely used requirements management tool (Dynamic Object-Oriented Requirements System) for capturing, linking, tracing, and analyzing large volumes of requirements, common in systems and regulated engineering.

Document-Database Integration

RequisitePro's hallmark: requirements live in familiar documents but are simultaneously stored in a database, so attributes, history, and traceability are maintained while authors work in a document view.

Why Use a Requirements Tool

Tools provide a single source of truth, enforce consistency, preserve history, enable impact analysis through traceability, and make managing changing requirements and scope feasible at scale.

Projects & Structure

RequisitePro Project

The container for a product's requirements work — its documents, requirement types, attributes, views, and traceability — defined and created at the start of using the tool.

Requirement Type

A classification (e.g., stakeholder need, feature, use case, software requirement) that groups requirements and defines the attributes they carry, supporting a structured requirements hierarchy.

Documentation Hierarchy

The layered set of documents and requirement levels (needs → features → detailed requirements) set up in the tool to organize requirements according to a defined standard.

Requirements Repository

The central database that stores all requirements, their attributes, versions, and links. Documents reference the repository so information stays consistent and current.

Document vs. Requirement

A document is a readable container of narrative and requirements; a requirement is a managed object in the database with attributes and links. RequisitePro keeps the two synchronized.

Attributes

Requirement Attribute

A property attached to a requirement — such as priority, status, difficulty, risk, owner, or source — used to manage, filter, sort, and report on requirements.

Using Attributes to Manage Scope

By assigning attributes like priority and status, teams can filter and report on requirements to decide what is in or out of scope and to track progress and stability.

Priority Attribute

An attribute indicating a requirement's relative importance, used to sequence work and make scope trade-offs when time or resources are constrained.

Status Attribute

An attribute tracking a requirement's lifecycle state (e.g., proposed, approved, incorporated, validated), giving visibility into requirement maturity and stability.

Traceability

Traceability

Explicit links between requirements (and to design, code, and tests) that show how items relate, enabling impact analysis and verification that all needs are addressed and tested.

Traceability Link

A directional relationship between two requirements (e.g., a feature 'traced from' a stakeholder need) recorded in the repository to support analysis and coverage checks.

Suspect Link

A traceability link automatically flagged when one of the connected requirements changes, alerting analysts to review whether the related requirement also needs updating.

Traceability Matrix

A grid view showing relationships between sets of requirements (e.g., features vs. use cases), making gaps, orphans, and coverage immediately visible.

Impact Analysis

Using traceability to determine which requirements, designs, and tests are affected by a proposed change, so its cost and risk can be assessed before approval.

Forward vs. Backward Traceability

Forward traceability links needs to derived requirements and tests (ensuring coverage); backward traceability links requirements back to their source (ensuring every requirement is justified).

Views & Reporting

Views

Configurable displays of requirements in RequisitePro — attribute matrix, traceability matrix, and traceability tree — used to analyze, filter, and report on the requirement set.

Attribute Matrix View

A view listing requirements with their attributes in columns, used to sort, filter, and edit attributes in bulk for analysis and scope decisions.

Traceability Tree View

A hierarchical view showing a requirement and the chain of items traced to or from it, useful for following relationships and assessing change impact.

Change Management

Managing Changing Requirements

Using the tool's versioning, attributes, and traceability to baseline requirements, record changes with history, flag suspect links, and assess impact — keeping change controlled throughout the lifecycle.

Requirement History / Versioning

The tool's record of changes to each requirement over time, preserving who changed what and when, supporting auditability and rollback.

Baseline

A snapshot of the requirement set agreed at a point in time, against which subsequent changes are compared and controlled.

Change Control

The process — supported by the tool — for proposing, evaluating (via impact analysis), approving, and incorporating requirement changes rather than allowing uncontrolled drift.

Best Practices

Requirements Management Best Practices

Establish clear requirement types and attributes, maintain disciplined traceability, baseline and control changes, keep documents and repository synchronized, and use views/reports to manage scope actively.

Relationship to Use Cases

This class builds on ICON's 'Defining & Managing Requirements with Use Cases': use cases and supplementary requirements are captured and managed as requirement objects within the tool.

Who Uses These Tools

Business analysts, requirements/QA managers, project leads, architects, and others involved in requirements capture, specification, and management — especially on larger or regulated projects.

Tool Selection Considerations

Choosing between tools like RequisitePro and DOORS depends on scale, regulatory needs, integration with existing tooling, and the complexity of traceability the project requires.