Requirements check-in/out tool, called r2db
AssigneeGM Global Technology Operations LLC
InventorDouglas P. Rheaume
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method for managing design requirements for a vehicle development program. A requirements management process and software tool are described which ensure that only properly-defined requirements are stored in a repository. Requirements are validated against a structured set of rules before they are allowed to be checked into the repository, and only validated requirements may be checked out and used for vehicle development activities. The process and tool also check the consistency of technical terms and data items as they are encountered, which prevents the improper use of the terms and data items.
Claims20
A method for managing requirements for a product development program, said method comprising:
- reading requirements from an input document;
- checking each requirement for proper usage of data items, technical terms, and acronyms;
- updating each requirement to use standard data items, technical terms, and acronyms where appropriate;
- analyzing each requirement for compliance with requirement authoring rules;
- updating each requirement to follow requirement authoring rules where necessary;
- and
- writing each valid requirement to a requirements repository.
A method for managing requirements for a vehicle development program, said method comprising:
- reading requirements from an input computer file, where the input computer file is an extensible markup language file or a rich text format file;
- checking each requirement for proper usage of data items, technical terms, and acronyms;
- updating each requirement to use standard data items, technical terms, and acronyms where appropriate;
- analyzing each requirement for compliance with requirement authoring rules;
- updating each requirement to follow requirement authoring rules where necessary;
- and
- writing each valid requirement to a requirements repository, where the requirements repository is a relational database.
A software tool for managing requirements for a product development program, said software tool comprising:
- a database of requirements, said database residing on a server computer;
- an interface to a terms management database containing a data dictionary, a glossary, and an acronym library;
- a utility for reading requirements from an input file;
- a module for analyzing each requirement from the input file to validate any terms or data items against contents of the terms management database;
- a module for analyzing each requirement from the input file to ensure that formatting rules and business rules are followed;
- a utility for writing valid requirements to the database of requirements;
- and
- a utility for reading requirements from the database of requirements and writing said requirements to an output file.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.