Since the tests are based on requirements, the better the quality of the requirements, the easier it will be to write tests from them. It is equally important to be able to trace tests to requirements and requirements to tests.

Some requirements management tools are able to find defects in the requirements, for example by checking for ambiguous or forbidden words, such as ‘might’, ‘and/or’, ‘as needed’ or ‘(to be decided)’.

Features or characteristics of requirements management tools are:

• To store the requirement statements.
• To store the information about requirement attributes.
• To check consistency of requirements.
• To identify undefined, missing or ‘to be defined later’ requirements.
• To prioritize requirements for testing purposes.
• To trace the requirements to tests and tests to requirements, functions or features.
• To trace through all the levels of requirements.
• Interfacing to test management tools.
• Coverage of requirements by a set of tests (sometimes).

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