Requirements That Work: Why Traceability Matters More Than Ever

You finish a design and feel good about it. Then, in the next review, you find that a key requirement changed last week.

This is one of the most frustrating parts of electronics development—and it happens everywhere. It’s not due to a lack of skill or discipline. It’s that critical information often lives outside the design environment, scattered across spreadsheets, PDFs, or buried in shared folders. By the time the update reaches everyone, it’s already too late.

And the later those errors are discovered, the more expensive they become. According to a study by NASA Johnson Space Center, the cost of fixing a requirements-related mistake grows exponentially over the course of development—from a few hours early in the design phase to weeks or even months once hardware is built.

The Spreadsheet Trap

Spreadsheets work—until they don’t. As projects scale, version conflicts multiply, ownership blurs, and small errors turn into costly rework.

According to Altium’s Requirements Management for Electronics Teams, more than 50% of electronics engineers still use spreadsheets and documents to manage and share requirements, even when their companies have an enterprise “system of record.” It’s familiar, but fragile. It slows everyone down and creates quality, performance, and compliance risks.

This is why projects slip. Not because engineers make bad decisions, but because they make good ones based on outdated information.

Disconnected Decisions

Even teams with formal requirements systems, like DOORS, Jama, Polarion, or Teamcenter, still struggle. These platforms are treated as repositories, not workspaces. Requirements live there, but engineering design happens somewhere else. To move faster, teams export data into spreadsheets—where traceability disappears.

Designers start working from old specs. Managers lose sight of what’s verified or at risk. Verification engineers spend hours chasing evidence right before an audit. Each group does its best, but the bigger picture stays fragmented.

Traceability as Visibility

Traceability means visibility. It means knowing exactly how a requirement was implemented in a design, how it was tested, built, and shipped. .

When that visibility exists, there’s no guessing. Teams see what’s complete, how their work connects to the larger system, and what is affected when a requirement inevitably changes.

For systems engineers, that means requirements flow clearly downstream.

For project managers, it means live awareness of progress without chasing updates.

And for engineers, it means fewer surprises and faster, more confident decisions.

Instead of experts managing requirements in a separate and siloed enterprise system, team-members work with requirements obviously displayed in context, directly in their design environment — no extra integrations and tools to maintain, no swapping screens or jumping between apps.

Bringing Requirements Where Design Happens

Altium Develop brings requirements into electronics designs. The creators who develop electronics interact with requirements in the same space where they design, review, and verify.

Teams can import requirements from existing documents and view them alongside schematics and layouts. Each requirement can be linked directly to a design feature, component, or layout element—so every specification has a clear, traceable connection to the hardware.

When some part of the system, specification, or hardware design changes, the team sees it in real time. Verification stays in sync automatically, and documentation follows without extra effort. For engineering teams focused on requirements-driven development, requirements transform from static checklists to essential tools that orchestrate the whole design process. 

From Verification to Confidence

Verification used to mean late-stage documentation and manual traceability reports. With Altium Develop, it happens as a natural byproduct of the development process.

Audit-ready traceability matrices and verification reports are generated directly from live data. Version histories record every change to the design or the requirements. Nothing gets lost, and no one has to rebuild evidence from scratch, as a separate, time-consuming work effort.

In regulated industries like medical, aerospace, and automotive—where traceability isn’t optional—this kind of workflow doesn’t just save time. It strengthens confidence that what was designed and manufactured is exactly what was intended to save lives, blast off into space, or safely transport passengers to their destinations. 

A Simpler, Smarter Way Forward

Requirements traceability shouldn’t be complex or expensive. It just needs to exist where engineers actually work.

Altium Develop gives teams that native capability—bringing requirements, design, and verification into one connected workspace. The result is complete confidence in fewer errors, less rework, and faster delivery.

Discover how Altium Develop connects requirements, design, and verification at altium.com/develop.