Early alignment of design requirements with stakeholder needs

Informality of design requirements is a problem, especially in distributed design teams, because it impacts upon the ability of a team to communicate. Since design requirements drive the design process, their miscommunication results in serious problems; for example, new products that do not align with the needs of the range of stakeholders to whom they are targeted. This, in turn, has a detrimental impact on traditional business performance indicators, such as market share, volume of sales, and profit. The research reported in this paper explored the applicability of requirements engineering and management techniques, traditionally used in the development of software-intensive systems, to the development of electromechanical consumer products. The motivational rationale traceability matrix (MoRaI(TM)) is introduced as a means to support the initial analysis of stakeholder needs and attributes, and the derivation of corresponding design requirements. The applicability of MoRal(TM) is demonstrated through application to a power solution case study. In this instance, the MoRal(TM) proved to be a powerful means of supporting the derivation of design requirements that are aligned with customer and other stakeholder needs, and are traceable to stakeholder intents.