Spotlight on Spira 6.9 - Requirements Management Document View

April 15th, 2021 by inflectra

It is widely agreed in the software industry that one of the keys to delivering high-quality products is to get the requirements "right." However, there is far less consensus on what "right" actually means and even less consensus on the best way to get there. So having powerful requirements management and requirements traceability is vitally important to the software development and testing process. In our latest version of SpiraTeam and SpiraPlan, we have improved the new requirements document view to make it more useful for business analysts (BAs) and other team members.

Requirements Document View

When we released Spira v6.2 back in August 2019, we added a new requirements document view. This view was added based on feedback from BA teams that liked using Spira but wanted a view that let them see the requirements' content written out in full, vs. having to view a grid of items and read the descriptions one by one through tooltips. This new view has been very popular since its inception, but it had several limitations:

  • It was only a read-only view, you had to click on individual items to make changes or edits.
  • Only the main Description rich text field was displayed, even if you had added other rich text custom properties.
  • You could not display different fields, e.g., test coverage, task progress, only a fixed set could be viewed.
  • There was no way to display requirements outline numbering.

Well, the good news is that we've heard your feedback, and Spira v6.9 addresses these issues in its new revamped requirements document view:

Easy Sidebar Navigation

The sidebar navigation has been enhanced to clarify which summary requirement you are viewing, with the ability to quickly view different sections of the requirement document in a high-performance view that blends usability with scalability. As with the previous version, you can display textual requirements as well as the associated use case diagrams.

Configurable Fields Display

The updated view includes a new field selector that lets you choose which fields you would like to display in the requirements document:

When you choose a rich text field such as "Notes," it is displayed as an additional inline text block under the main description. If you choose any of the other fields (e.g., test coverage, task progress, type, priority, status, etc.), it will be displayed in the grey header bar just under the title of the requirement.

Inline Editing of Rich Text Fields

The new document view lets you easily edit any of the rich text fields (including the standard Description field plus any custom fields) inline using our new text editor (an updated version of CKEDITOR). This makes requirements document editing really straightforward, with no need to leave this screen to make real-time changes:

Requirements Outline Numbering

One frequent request by teams used to traditional requirements documents was the need to display an outline number (e.g., 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3) with each requirement to make it easier to see the decomposition of business requirements to system requirements, etc. In this new update, we have added a new 'virtual field' called "Outline Number," which is available in the new column selector:

When you choose to display this field, Spira will display the requirements' outline number before each title and requirement ID.

We'd Love Your Feedback?

We hope you like these enhancements to the requirements document view, please let us know if you have any feedback.

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