Introduction

Requirements engineering is one of the most important disciplines in the system lifecycle and when done well it will set the foundation for a successful project or program of work, ultimately ensuring that great value is delivered to the users and other stakeholders. Enterprise Architect is a sophisticated and intuitive platform for developing and managing requirements from modeling stakeholders and visions, business cases, business drivers and capabilities to detailed functional and non-functional requirements. Requirements can be prioritized, traced and tracked, and changes can be recorded, baselined, versioned and audited. Analysts can work together in a collaborative platform with role based Security, Discussions, Team Library, Model Mail and a range of other tools to encourage best practice and productivity.

How it will help you

Readers will typically come to the topic of requirements engineering with some existing knowledge or experience even if it is something that has been learnt in lectures or by on the job training, or perhaps by using a different tool. The readers will benefit by understanding the product features and the tools that are available to develop and manage requirements in Enterprise Architect and this will enable them to be more productive as an individual and also as a member of a team.

Who will benefit

Anyone involved in the development or management of requirements whether at a strategic level, a business value level or a system development level will benefit from reading this information. This includes a wide range of roles including Strategic Thinkers, Business and Requirements Analysts, Enterprise, Business, Technical and Solution Architects, Project and Program Managers, Developers, Test Desingers and User Experience Designers.

What you will learn

This topic will teach you how to use the powerful features of Enterprise Architect to develop and manage Requirements, to create documentation and to work collaboratively as a member of a team using a formal or informal system life cycle process or standard.

Overview of the Documentation

Subject area	Description	See also
Meet the Requirements Tools	Lists the key tools that are used for developing and managing requirements, including a picture of the tool in action, where to find the tool, how to use it and how to become proficient in using the tool. There are a large number of additional useful tools that are described in the last topic, Additional Requirements Tools.	Meet the Requirement Tools
Requirements Overview	Puts requirements engineering in context by defining what requirements are, the different levels of requirements, characteristics of good requirements and the business context of requirements. The information also includes the concept of a Requirements diagram that readers coming from text based tools might not be familiar with, and how to create and view requirements in Enterprise Architect.	Requirements Overview
Requirements Development	Discusses the activities and tasks associated with discovering, evaluating, recording, documenting and validating the requirements. The topic is conveniently divided into four sub-topics - Elicitation, Analysis, Specification and Validation - and identifies a wide range of features that can be used, from Mind Mapping diagrams for recording information in elicitation workshops, to the Specification Manager for creating requirements, to Test Cases for validating them.	Requirements Development
Requirements Management	Describes the activities needed to maintain a set of requirements that represent an accord or agreement between the project team and the customer. It includes composing hierarchies of requirements, tracing other elements back to requirements, and tracking the properties of requirements including Status, Priority, and Difficulty. It also describes managing changing requirements, Volatility and assessing the impact of changing requirements.	Requirements Management
Requirements Documentation	Describes how formal and informal Requirements Documentation can be generated directly from Enterprise Architect using a series of predefined and extensible templates. This includes Glossaries, Data Dictionaries, Use Case Reports and Documents such as a System Requirements Specification.	Requirements Documentation
Requirement Processes and Standards	Puts the usage of Enterprise Architect's requirements tools in the context of system and requirements processes and standards. The topic describes how flexible the tools are and how they can be used with any process or standard.	Requirement Processes and Standards
Additional Requirements Tools	Lists a series of additional tools that can be used for requirements engineering, including a picture of the tool in action, where to find the tool, how to use it and how to become proficient in using the tool. There are a number of key tools that are the most important tools for requirement engineering that are described in the first topic entitled Meet the Requirements Tools.	Additional Requirements Tools