Leading Edge Requirements Engineering for the Automotive Industry - With the Use of JAMA 2021-01-0137

There have been many publications about requirements management, and still organizations are struggling to show 100% coverage and traceability in a lean way. It does not start with CMMI nor SPICE. It does not end with tools like DOORs, Polarion, Codebeamer or JAMA. It does depend on the right setup and how it feels in the everyday life of an engineer.

This paper defines and explains what it takes to establish leading edge requirements engineering for the automotive industry. It describes how work day integration of requirements engineering and management can be achieved. The different roles in engineering are addressed with their unique needs to support them. One 120% RQM data model is shown and explained. The necessary rollout project is designed with activities to adapt a tool to existing processes and individual tools, explain, improve, transfer as well as train/coach the engineers. The impact of and resolution for existing bypasses is discussed as well as the necessary qualification of rollout coaches. Before going in bit and byte - let’s not forget to get Product Management on board.

Usability is a key for product success, so why should it be different for the tool success. Here we show how a tool need to adapt, not just to the different engineering roles but also to the interfaces of management and the rest of the tool landscape. In efficiency in use of roots in hesitation and fear of the engineers. Simple concepts are explained to introduce a creative fail-forward culture around requirements engineering. Chicken-or-Egg discussions are bypassed with a creative distinction or requirements versus specification. The activities around requirements are explained in a complete requirements lifecycle model. Necessary design levels and all RQM items are shown in and exemplary tool setup in JAMA Connect. A test driven bottom up approach is added for special use-cases.

Finally it is shown how we can reduce surprises ate product release significantly with 100% traceability and integrated change management. The difference of coverage and traceability if shown and explained and how to use it to lift the readers requirements management in the 21st century. As part of the outlook, the challenge of configuration management is addresses as a problem that today is still not sufficiently supported by most requirements management tools..