Requirement Properties

Requirements development and management is critical to the success of any project and the properties of the requirements are important to the prioritization, and the way they will be elaborated and used within an implementation or development team. All Enterprise Architect elements have standard properties such as Status, Author and Phase but the requirement element has additional properties such as Difficulty and Priority. Some requirements processes will specify specific properties such as Owner and Volatility (Stability) and these can be configured by using Tagged Values that can be applied to each requirement. The 'Notes' field for a requirement has special significance as it often contains a formal and contractual description of how the system must behave or perform.

Access

On a diagram or in the Project Browser, select an element and:

Ribbon	Design > Element > Properties > Properties
Context Menu	Right-click on element \| Properties
Keyboard Shortcuts	Alt+Enter
Other	Double-click on element

Use to

Document requirements
Set requirement properties such as Type, Difficulty and Priority
Set other element properties common to both Requirements and other model elements

Reference

Field	Action	See also
Short Description	The name of the Requirement, which could include numbering, a natural language description, or some other formal specification. If you have set up Auto Names and Counters for Requirements and they are active, and you already have some text in this field, it would be over-written by the auto-counter text.	Set Auto Naming and Auto Counters
Alias	An alternate name (alias) to be used for this requirement. If you have set Alias autonaming and autonumbering, and you have already have some text in this field, it is over-written by the auto-counter text.	Set Auto Naming and Auto Counters
Status	The current status of this requirement.	Color Code Requirements
Difficulty	An estimate of the difficulty in meeting this requirement; select from: Low Medium High
Priority	The relative importance of meeting this requirement compared to other requirements; select from: Low Medium High
Author	The modeler who created this requirement.	Authors
Key Words	A set of user-defined words that could be used to index or define the subject of this requirement.
Type	The type of this Requirement, typically used as a category for the Requirement. Possible values are defined on the 'Requirements' tab of the General Types window. This field displays a single value. You can click on the drop-down arrow and select a different value if necessary. However, be aware that you can define multiple values for this field, including stereotypes that you create or that are used in integrated or imported MDG technologies. You assign these multiple values using the Properties window for the selected Requirement element, in the 'Stereotype' field. This has two impacts on the 'Type' field: The value displayed in the field might have been set on the Properties window, and might not be shown in the drop-down list (if it is a stereotype and not a General Type) If you select a different value from the 'Type' drop-down list, you change only the first of the multiple values (the one displayed in the field); you do not change any of the other multiple values, which remain set	Properties Window Requirement Types
Phase	The project phase of this requirement.
Version	The version of this requirement.
Last Update	Read-only field specifying when this Requirement was last changed.
Created	Read-only field specifying when this Requirement was first created.
Notes	The description of this requirement, typically providing a more detailed explanation of the requirement. Some requirement processes prescribe that only a statement of the requirement be provided, and the 'Notes' field in these cases would remain blank. Novice modelers sometimes make the mistake of using this field for analyst discussions about the requirement; this commentary is best entered in the purpose-built Collaborate window.	Notes Linked Documents

Notes

In Requirement Management tools and texts, the characteristics of a requirement are commonly called Attributes; however, in UML the term Attribute refers to a different type of feature, and the Requirement characteristics are defined as properties - in this Enterprise Architect documentation, the term properties is used.
In a project, it might be necessary to define more information in a Requirement than is provided by the standard properties and Tagged Values can be used for this purpose.

Learn more

Extend Requirement Properties