Requirements help from NI

NI has a product I'm looking at right now. It's called NI Requirements Gateway and it's to help keep track of requirements. It won't help deal with poorly written requirements like "The user interface shall be easy to use by anyone". It will help you track the requirements from the requirements document to the code. Whether the requirements are simply documented in MS Word or MS Excel, or kept in a requirements database like DOORS or Requisite Pro.

I'm dealing with requirements written in MS Word. Specialized MS Word tags (similar to tags like Heading 1) can be put in the requirements document. Then the complimentary tags can be placed in TestStand and down in the code called by the sequence step. NI Requirements Gateway then extracts the tags and follow them down to the code. I know it works with TestStand, LabWindows, and LabVIEW. All NI Products, and figuring NI is doing what they do, I bet it can flow down into other languages, like .dlls built in C++, though I'm not sure about that.

It can come up with a requirements traceability matrix, a table to easily trace the requirements from the document, to the code. It assumes the requirements are specific and not vague, general requirements like the one above. But for real requirement it helps prove the requirement was implemented.

Happy Requirements tracing.