Empowering Requirements for a Product Family

Document-based management of requirements can be effective for single site, narrowly scoped projects. However, we firmly believe that it is essential to move to a database-centered way of managing requirements if platform-based product development and enterprise wide requirements management is to be fully supported. This paper introduces an approach to the specification of system families that is database centered. It outlines the experience of producing a database of requirements for the TV product. The schema was built using RTM, a requirements management tool supplied by Integrated Chipware. It constitutes a practical example of the advantages that can be gained by changing from the conventional document based requirements management process. It also shows the difficulties that need to be dealt with when mapping from a document-based to a database centered product specification.