Requirements

Every requirement in TraceUnified is a controlled record with its own identity, lifecycle, and state — scored for quality and checked for compliance as you write, not after the fact. Requirements are the anchor of the thread: tests verify them, risks reference them, and architecture realizes them.

This section covers authoring requirements, the item types and fields that structure them, how they’re versioned, and the governance — lifecycle, quality, and compliance — that keeps them trustworthy.

Requirements as controlled records, quality checked as you write

A requirement in TraceUnified is not a row of text — it’s a controlled record with its own identity, lifecycle, and state, scored for quality and checked for compliance during authoring rather than in a cleanup pass before an audit. Catching a weak or ambiguous requirement while it’s being written is far cheaper than discovering it downstream, and doing the compliance check inline means the record is trustworthy by the time it’s approved, not merely later corrected.

The anchor of the thread

Requirements are where traceability begins. Tests verify them, risks reference them, and architecture realizes them — so the quality of the requirement record propagates through everything connected to it. That central position is why the structure matters: item types and fields give each requirement a consistent shape, and versions and history capture every change so the record’s evolution is fully accountable.

Lifecycle, quality, and compliance built in

Three kinds of governance keep requirements trustworthy. Lifecycle states move a requirement through draft, review, approved, and beyond under controlled transitions. Quality scoring evaluates writing quality and ALCOA+ data-integrity expectations as you author. Compliance checks apply framework-specific rules during authoring. Together they mean a requirement isn’t just written — it’s written under control, measured, and checked, which is what lets the rest of the thread depend on it.

What’s in this section

• Authoring requirements — creating and editing under control
• Item types & fields — the structure of a requirement
• Versions & history — every change, captured
• Lifecycle & states — draft, review, approved, and beyond
• Quality scoring — writing quality and ALCOA+ data integrity
• Compliance checks — framework checks during authoring
• Author a requirement — a step-by-step walkthrough from draft to clean quality and compliance