Review Requirements for Standards Conformance

R2026b

If you have the Third-Party Tool Connector for Requirements Toolbox™ add-on, you can check whether the requirements in a requirements set conform to established writing standards, such as Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax (EARS)[1] and Rupp's templates [2], by using the Requirements Advisor. The Requirements Advisor analyzes requirements, identifies conformance issues, and suggests modifications to fix conformance issues.

Note

The Requirements Advisor uses MATLAB^® Copilot to analyze requirements to check for conformance issues. Consequently, conformance checks might contain errors or incorrect results. Validate the results and suggested modifications before you update requirements or apply modifications suggested by the Requirements Advisor.

Supported Writing Standards

You can use the Requirements Advisor to check requirements against the EARS guidelines or Rupp's requirements templates. These standards define requirements syntax and templates for writing requirements.

Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax (EARS)

EARS defines a syntax structure for writing natural language requirements. Each syntax structure uses a keyword to clarify the conditions under which a requirement applies. EARS defines a syntax structure for these types of requirements:

• Ubiquitous requirements — Requirements that apply at all times with no precondition or trigger:

  The [system] shall [action].

• Event-driven requirements — Requirements that are triggered by a specific event:

  When [event], the [system] shall [action].

• State-driven requirements — Requirements that apply while the system is in a particular state:

  While [state], the [system] shall [action].

• Optional feature requirements — Requirements that apply in systems with a specific feature:

  Where [feature], the [system] shall [action].

• Unwanted behavior requirements — Requirements that specify how a system responds to undesirable situations, such as failures and disturbances:

  If [condition], then the [system] shall [action].

• Complex requirements — Requirements that combine multiple EARS syntaxes using combinations of the keywords When, While, and Where.

Rupp's Requirements Templates

The Rupp's template defines syntax structure for these requirements:

• Autonomous requirements — Requirements that describe functionality that does not require user interaction:

  The [system] shall [process verb] [object].

• User interaction requirements — Requirements that describe functionality that requires user interaction:

  The [system] shall provide [user] the ability to [process verb] [object].

• Interface requirements — Requirements that describe system functionality that occurs as a response to external systems:

  The [system] shall be able to [process verb] [object].

Run a Requirements Conformance Check

You can check the Summary or Description requirement properties for conformance to EARS and Rupp's requirements writing standards. To check requirements against a writing standard:

1. Sign in to your MathWorks^® account.

2. Open the new Requirements Editor UI.

3. Open the requirement set. Click Open, then click Browse this PC. In the Open Requirement or Link Set File dialog box, select the requirement set file.

4. Open the Requirements Advisor. In the Requirements Editor, in the Tools section, click Requirements Advisor.

5. Select the requirements property to check for conformance. In the Run section, click Preferences. In the Requirements Advisor Preferences dialog box, set the Requirement Property property to Summary or Description and click Apply.

6. Select the conformance checks to run. In the Advisor tab, click Run Analysis and, in the Analyze Requirements section, select one or more conformance checks.

7. Analyze the requirement set. Click Run Analysis. By default, the analysis checks all the requirements in the requirement set.

   Tip

   To analyze a subset of requirements, select the requirements and click Run Analysis. Then, click Start on Selection.

Review Requirements Conformance Results

After you run conformance checks on requirements, you can view the results and suggested modifications in the Requirements Advisor.

To view results in the Summary or Description column of the requirements, in the Requirements Advisor, in the View section, click Show Results in Table. Then, select the conformance check results. To view results for all conformance checks, click Show All.

The requirement column displays a status icon for each check you selected. Each icon indicates whether the check found conformance issues, found no issues, or has stale results because the requirement changed after the analysis. For example:

• — The check found conformance issues.

• — The check found no issues.

• — The results are stale because the requirement changed after the analysis.

To view detailed information about the analysis results, open the Requirements Advisor panel. In the View section, click Result Details Panel.

To view details for a specific requirement, select the requirement and then expand the EARS Conformance or Rupp's Conformance. If the conformance check finds issues, the section lists an explanation of the issues and a suggested modification.

You can modify requirements with issues by using the suggested modification or manually rewriting the requirement.

To use the suggested modification, click the Copy suggestion button . Then, paste the suggested modification in the requirement property that you ran the conformance check on. To regenerate the suggested modification, click the Regenerate suggestion button .

After you update the requirement, the column displays the stale results icon . Rerun the conformance analysis to check for additional conformance issues.

References

[1] Mavin, Alistair, Philip Wilkinson, Adrian Harwood, and Mark Novak. “Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax (EARS).” 2009 17th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, August 2009, 317–22. https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2009.9.

[2] Arora, Chetan, Mehrdad Sabetzadeh, Lionel Briand, and Frank Zimmer. “Automated Checking of Conformance to Requirements Templates Using Natural Language Processing.” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 41, no. 10 (2015): 944–68. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2015.2428709.