Create Requirements

Requirement Analysts tend to work in a variety of ways, some preferring to work with lists of elements as they would in a spreadsheet, or textual representations like a word processor document, or visually as they might in a drawing tool. Enterprise Architect embraces this variation and provides functionality for Requirement Analysts to work using their preferred method for creating and editing requirements. This can be in diagrams, in lists such as the diagram and Package lists, and in the Specification Manager. The Specification Manager is a powerful and flexible textual tool that simulates working in a word processor but that allows you to edit names, descriptions and properties of a requirement in a single interface.

Enterprise Architect also assists with creating Requirement elements by allowing them to be dragged into the model from external text documents or by importing them from spreadsheets and other documents, and it can integrate with large requirements management tools such as Telelogic DOORS.

Ways to create Requirement elements

Within Enterprise Architect you can create external Requirement elements in a number of ways, such as:

Typing or copy/pasting a text description into the body of the Specification Manager
Dragging a Requirement icon from the Diagram Toolbox into a specific diagram
Generating an element within a specific Package in the Project Browser
Dragging text from a text file onto a diagram, to generate a requirement based on that text
Importing requirements from a spreadsheet application such as Excel, via CSV
Creating Requirement elements on the Package Browser or Diagram List for the selected Package or diagram
Converting an internal element requirement (responsibility) into an external Requirement element, in a selected target Package
Importing requirements from another requirements management tool, such as Telelogic DOORS (in this case via the Sparx Systems MDG Link For DOORS integration tool)

All methods that add a Requirement to a diagram or window also add the Requirement to the diagram's parent Package in the Project Browser.

Create Requirement elements from text

This procedure converts a text section heading into an element name and the section text into the element's Notes text. You can use this procedure to generate elements of a range of types; however, it is particularly useful for generating Requirements from a requirements specification document.

Step	Action	See also
1	Open a Requirements diagram in the Diagram View.	Requirements Diagram
2	Open the document file containing the text you want to generate Requirement elements from (this can be opened in any common text editing tool).
3	Highlight the required heading and associated text and drag them from the text file into the diagram. The Toolbox Shortcut menu displays.	Toolbox Shortcut Menu
4	Navigate through the menus and select the required element type (in this case, click on Common and Requirement).
5	Enterprise Architect creates a (Requirement) element in the diagram, and displays the 'Properties' dialog with the section heading in the 'Name' (or equivalent) field and the text in the 'Notes' field; the element is also added to the diagram's parent Package.

Notes

The Requirement element name can be simply descriptive text, with or without a manually-typed reference number; however, as requirements often have to have a unique reference for external checking, you can use the Enterprise Architect auto-numbering facility to automatically apply a numbering system with or without prefixes and suffixes - set the element type to Requirement
Requirement elements can be displayed on a diagram with or without an identifying 'E' in the top right corner; to toggle display of this letter, select or deselect the 'Show stereotype icon for requirements' checkbox on the 'Preferences' dialog, 'Objects' page
Requirement elements can be color coded on a diagram to indicate their status

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