How can we build a Requirements library in SES ENGINEERING Studio?

What are the key objectives of creating a Requirements library?

The primary objective of developing a Requirements Library in SES Engineering Studio is to create a reusable, structured, and standard-aligned repository of requirements. By aligning the library with standards, organizations can streamline compliance activities and accelerate the development of safety-critical products.

The library also aims to unify terminology, enable consistent requirement authoring, determine requirements’ patterns, and provide early insight into requirements’ quality.

What problems does a Requirements library solve?

Requirements often demand rigorous interpretation of large, complex standards. Teams face challenges such as:

• Inconsistent terminology across projects
• Repeated reinvention of requirements for each new product
• Missing or unclear requirements caused by manual interpretation
• Difficulty evaluating requirement quality early in the process
• Increased effort and cost due to fragmented knowledge

Without a structured approach, creating requirements becomes time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to scale across projects.

How does a Requirements library improve requirement development and compliance?

The library provides a centralized, reusable resource that captures the essence of standards and transforms it into practical building blocks for requirement authoring, requirements reuse, and quality. The key components delivered include:

• Standardized terminology for consistent communication
• Semantic clusters that group related concepts
• Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) to map requirements to system elements
• Requirement patterns that guide clear and compliant requirement writing
• Requirement Templates that allow reuse by instantiating Requirements by “filling the gap”.
• Quality metrics to assess requirement clarity and completeness early on

Together, these elements create a coherent framework that simplifies compliance and improves the quality of requirements.

Approach to create a library

To create a library, the following is a structured workflow:

1. Extraction of Terms
   Key concepts and terminology need to be identified from the standards.
   
2. Clustering of Concepts
   Related terms and requirements need to be grouped into thematic clusters that reflect the logic of the standard.
   
3. Creation of the Product Breakdown Structure
   
4. Development of Requirement Patterns
   Patterns need to be created to standardize how requirements should be authored, improving clarity and reducing ambiguity.
   
5. Identification of Requirement Templates
   Templates must be identified, and variants must be included as wildcards.

6. Definition of Quality Metrics
   Metrics need to be introduced to evaluate requirement quality during authoring, ensuring higher-quality outputs earlier in the lifecycle.

This methodical workflow ensures structure, repeatability, and traceability from the standard to the final requirements.

What benefits does a requirements library deliver to customers?

The library delivers measurable value across engineering and compliance activities:

• Reduced effort: Teams spend far less time interpreting standards or rewriting common requirements.
• Consistency and compliance: Uniform terminology and patterns improve clarity and ensure alignment with standards.
• Reuses Requirements: Initial approach to systematic Requirements Reuse
• Higher requirement quality: Early application of quality metrics helps catch issues before they propagate.
• Faster project execution: Reusable standardized content accelerates requirement authoring and review cycles.
• Scalability across projects: The library supports multiple product lines, enabling organizations to scale safety practices efficiently.

For readers interested in exploring the theoretical foundation behind these practices, ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148 offers a comprehensive overview of Requirements Engineering principles and quality criteria.

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How to Improve Requirements Quality: A Smart Guide for Engineers

Strong engineering projects start with strong requirements. Just as a building depends on concrete and steel, a project depends on clear, consistent, and correct requirements. When these are poorly written, confusion grows, costs rise, and systems risk failure.

This fast guide for engineers walks you through what requirements quality means, why it matters, and the practical steps and tools you can use to improve it right away.

What happens when requirements quality is poor?

When requirements are ambiguous or incomplete, they create misinterpretations, rework, and costly delays.
As a project advances from Concept → Design → Development & Test → Production → Operation → Maintenance  → Retirement —the cost of fixing each issue increases dramatically.

Real-world examples highlight the impact of unclear specifications:

• NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter failed due to a metric–imperial conversion mistake, costing $125 million.
• French railway operator spent €50 million refitting trains that didn’t fit older stations.
• Aerospace engine programs lost billions because of imprecise or contradictory requirements.

Each case proves that poor requirements discovered late can turn small oversights into enormous financial losses.

How can engineers make requirements more effective?

High-quality requirements are clear, testable, and traceable. A simple starting point is the SMART model:

• Specific – Avoid vague or generic wording.
• Measurable – Make verification possible with quantifiable data.
• Attainable – Set realistic objectives based on available resources.
• Relevant – Focus on what truly matters to system performance.
• Time-based – Include deadlines or timing when appropriate.

Two essentials complement SMART:

• Verification: Prove every requirement can be tested or demonstrated.
• Traceability: Link each element from need → requirement → design → implementation → test.

Together, they ensure every statement has both purpose and evidence.

How do you assess requirements quality?

To evaluate how solid your specification really is, apply the Three C’s framework:

• Correctness – Does each requirement align with stakeholder needs and standards?
• Completeness – Does the entire set cover every necessary aspect?
• Consistency – Are there contradictions or overlaps?

This trio forms the foundation of any effective requirements-quality check.

What are the best tips for writing clear requirements?

Follow these 12 tips to keep your requirements precise and easy to understand:

1. Be short and precise. Cut noise, keep essential details.
2. Use “shall.” Avoid weak verbs like should or may.
3. One idea per statement. Keep requirements atomic.
4. Prefer active voice. Clarify who performs each action.
5. Avoid negatives. Describe what the system does, not what it doesn’t do.
6. Stay consistent with terminology. Eliminate ambiguous synonyms.
7. Don’t embed solutions. State the “what,” not the “how.”
8. Use units and tolerances. Prevent measurement confusion.
9. Keep models aligned. Ensure requirements mirror design structures.
10. Match detail to phase. Add precision as development progresses.
11. Avoid combined actions (“and/or”). Split complex sentences.
12. Follow internal writing standards. Maintain uniform style.

Bonus!

13. Apply common sense. Context and clarity always come first.

Additional Bonus!

14. Do you want to use LLMs to provide the first shot? No problem, but then assure the previous tips in a deterministic way

Is there a pattern for writing better requirements?

Yes. A consistent pattern reduces ambiguity and supports automation:

When [condition], the [subject] shall [action] [object] **[constraint]*.

Examples:

• When the temperature sensor detects an obstacle, the brake subsystem shall stop the acceleration engine in less than 20 milliseconds.
• When the gas pedal is pressed, the vehicle shall reach 100 km/h in less than 5 seconds.

Patterns make writing faster and verification easier.

Which tools can help engineers evaluate requirements quality?

Manual reviews help, but automation ensures consistency across large projects.
Two solutions make this possible:

RAT – AUTHORING Tool

• Works directly with Microsoft Excel or other sources.
• Detects spelling issues, missing units, and vague terms as you write.
• Suggests instant corrections to improve clarity and compliance.

RQA – QUALITY Studio

• Analyzes correctness, consistency, and completeness using configurable metrics.
• Flags unit mismatches, ambiguous verbs, and missing tolerances.
• Lets teams set “quality belts” to define strictness levels.
• Synchronizes with RAT for real-time author–reviewer collaboration.

Together, these tools allow engineers to identify quality issues early and avoid expensive late-stage rework.

How can you start improving your requirements today?

Follow these quick, actionable steps:

• Apply the SMART + Three C’s framework to every new specification.
• Use a shared requirement pattern to standardize structure.
• Adopt the 12 + 1 tips as your team’s internal checklist.
• Run a RAT + RQA pilot to measure baseline quality and progress.
• Explore more of our related guides from our blog:
  • Requirements or Models – Which Works the Best?

Why focus on requirements quality now?

Because better requirements lead to better systems. Each improvement, whether in wording, structure, or automation, saves time, prevents errors, and builds confidence in your engineering process. To learn how RAT – AUTHORING Tool and RQA – QUALITY Studio can strengthen your workflow, you can check out our product websites, flyers, and even contact us to book a demo!

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Enable a digital thread through interoperability

A “digital thread” refers to an integrated approach to managing, analyzing, and using all knowledge, information, and data throughout a system’s life cycle.

Repositories – an engineering backbone

While different organizations may use disparate processes, methods, and tools, establishing an authoritative source of truth for all the information across system engineering stages is crucial to enable a digital thread. In Systems REUSE, the authoritative source of truth is supported by an engineering backbone or repositories and represents the cornerstone of its approach.

Interoperability between tools’ information

The transition from the V-model to a more interconnected digital twin approach emphasizes the necessity of connectivity and synchronization across tools. In this context, interoperability among diverse tools and information sources used in systems engineering is highly important. A solution to current interoperability challenges solves the need for synchronized sources of truth that can facilitate traceability and consistency across multiple disciplines and applications. Our tool SES ENGINEERING Studio offers a synchronized source of truth, traceability, consistency of information, and interoperability, thus enabling this digital thread.  With SES it is possible to automate the digital thread and interoperability tasks, allowing various engineering domains to better collaborate and share data.

The necessity of breaking boundaries

In today’s interconnected world, systems engineering cannot afford to be limited by geographical boundaries. The digital thread serves as a powerful means of fostering collaboration between international entities on large projects. By dismantling these barriers, teams can better leverage diverse expertise and resources, ultimately enhancing project outcomes.

The evolution of systems engineering

Traditional methods such as the V-model are evolving into more sophisticated frameworks like the digital twin. This shift acknowledges the complexity of modern engineering projects and the need for continuous interaction between different phases of the system life cycle. Recognizing this evolution helps practitioners update their knowledge and approaches, positioning them more favorably to tackle ongoing changes in technology.

Authoritative sources of truth

Establishing a synchronized source of truth is fundamental for effective systems engineering. It ensures that all stakeholders work from a single, accurate source of information, facilitating better decision-making and transparency throughout the system life cycle. This approach mitigates misunderstandings and inefficiencies that arise from disparate sources of data.

Interoperability as a critical requirement

The success of implementing a digital thread hinges on the ability to achieve interoperability between various engineering tools and software platforms. Organizations must invest in developing robust integration capabilities, including connectors and APIs, to ensure that information flows seamlessly across different environments.

Role of systems engineers

The evolving landscape of systems engineering demands a more proactive role from systems engineers, who must now navigate advancements in toolsets and methodologies. Continuous professional development and adaptability are essential for engineers to harness the capabilities of new technologies effectively.

Digital thread automation

By automating processes within the digital thread, organizations can reduce manual effort, increase consistency, and streamline project delivery. Utilizing automation tools allows teams to focus on higher-order tasks, fostering innovation and enhancing overall system quality.

Practical applications in collaboration

Demonstrations illustrated the potential for diverse teams to collaborate effectively with existing systems. Practical case studies highlighted the challenges of integrating systems from different domains and the methodologies for addressing them, showcasing how good practices can pave the way for successful digital thread implementations.

The principles discussed serve as a valuable guide for professionals looking to adapt to the ongoing changes within the field, providing a clear roadmap toward a more integrated and efficient future in systems engineering.

Requirements or models, which works the best?

One of the biggest challenges for a Systems Engineering organization today is to know how to manage its engineering knowledge. Models have become very popular, but when the level of understanding of its content (for explainability purposes) has been tested you can see that people tend to understand a text better than a plain model without any text.

Requirements, as well as models, can be used to capture stakeholders’ needs, system capabilities, and non-functional knowledge (which sometimes may include design constraints), and after that, the information is passed downstream to the persons in need of that information. The goal for many organizations today is to exclusively use models to capture this kind of knowledge, and at The REUSE Company, our opinion is that this will not work. We state that models work very well for properly formalizing knowledge but NOT for communicating it between humans, as communication needs a similar level of language skills on all sides.                                                                       

Nevertheless, models have obvious benefits if you use them correctly. The trend today is basically “all or nothing” and that is wrong. Models are very useful for automatic processing, simulation, analysis, code development, test case development, etc. However, the MBSE community says that models are great for stakeholder communication, and we don’t agree with this. Many people assume that you understand modeling notation just as well as natural language, but we have learned to interpret models later in life than we learned to talk. Theoretically, it works to communicate through models, but in real life, it does not.

Engineering today seems to have a fight against complexity and to defeat that many people introduce modeling as the universal way to solve every issue. You add views and diagrams to manage every need. However, due to the complexity of the systems, we are creating monster models. Today’s technology and systems are so complex that we more than ever need communication between different groups of stakeholders, and communication is becoming more difficult by only using models.

Engineering means to communicate and agree on different things. We often work in different teams and need a way of working that maintains the information and knowledge over time. This means that we still need requirements written in natural language, fully connected to models. And we need to be able to trace between different knowledge assets as well. At The REUSE Company, we notice that engineering teams need help in analyzing the correctness, completeness, and consistency of different knowledge assets like requirements and specifications, and we also offer the possibility of analyzing models. Imagine comparing a System Specification with a System Model to find errors like inconsistency or incompleteness!

When we help people write high-quality requirements using structured techniques like patterns, they notice that we can start to build powerful reasoning around the requirements themselves. If we add the possibility to compare the requirements against other assets like models, it will be a breakthrough!

In our opinion, requirements written in plain and natural text will co-exist with models in the future and they will not be replaced by them. We will need to capture the different stakeholder needs with natural language requirements, transform the requirements into models and connect them all, assure consistency (in an automatic way) between both when changes occur, and assure consistency when the documentation is managed. Let the computers manage your documents when models are operated! Requirements are here to stay.

Requirements Management Tools

Requirements management – a part of requirements engineering

 Requirements Engineering is a complex task that deals with the process of developing and verifying a system’s requirements. The process of requirements engineering includes requirements formulation, validation, verification, and management. To develop requirements, you need to collect them from different sources like the customer, environmental factors, government regulations, etc. The next steps include documenting the requirements, reviewing them with the stakeholders, and translating them into specific, testable, and achievable requirements.  

 

 

 

 

Requirements, as well as the system, and even the sub-systems, will need to be constantly verified and validated during the process. Establishing traceability, early in the process, between different requirements, and between requirements and test plans, will make the verification of the requirements (and later of the system) easier. The goal of Requirements Engineering is to understand the stakeholders’ needs and ensure that the final product meets their expectations. 

 

What is Requirements Management? 

 

As part of Requirements Engineering, Requirements Management is a systematic process of organizing, connecting, and controlling the requirements for a system, project, or product. Requirements management is focused on managing and controlling changes and traces within the requirements life cycle. The size of the requirement sets in complex projects demands a proper digitalization of the process using specialized requirements management systems (RMS).

 

 

Benefits of using a Requirements Management System

A Requirements Management System improves the communication between the stakeholders and ensures that they have a common management of the requirements (versions, changes, traces, configurations, document management, etc.). When there is a team working on the requirements, it is important that the tool is collaborative and that you can trace every change that is made. It is common to find defects in the development process of the requirements, but proper requirements management will reduce defects, and the cost in time and money will be less. It is also common to find failures in the product outcome, and correct requirements management will reduce rework and improve the outcome. Other important features of requirements management tools are that they should be easy to use, be able to establish automatic relationships across requirements, and offer impact analysis.

 

SES ENGINEERING Studio

Our tools, either as a part of SES ENGINEERING Studio or one by one as a Stand-Alone, connect and interoperate with almost all the relevant requirements management systems in the market. RAT – AUTHORING Tool offers writing assistance for requirements and documents. RQA – QUALITY Studio analyses the quality of your requirements and documents. Traceability Studio keeps a trace of all the changes in your requirements, and V&V Studio takes care of the verification and validation tasks.

 

 

Requirements Management Systems/Tools List

We have gathered information on some Requirements Management Tools that help you document, analyze, trace, prioritize, and communicate your requirements. In this list, we have included non-traditional requirements management tools like MS Word and MS Excel. Thanks to their excellent writing features, these are typically tools to start writing requirements and then migrate to more professional tools when the maturity of the team in Requirements Engineering is enough. By including our Requirements Management capabilities in MS Word or MS Excel you can use them directly as a Requirements Management tool. (More information in our Connectors section)

 

Please, note that this list does not imply a recommendation.