Managing Requirements &
Traceability
Presented by Fred Beecher

AXURE IS NOT A REQUIREMENTS
MANAGEMENT TOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it

AXURE IS NOT A REPLACEMENT
FOR USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN!

No getting around that one. Sorry.

My Approach
Structure Manage
Collaborate
Documents References

Collaboration

Collaborate
User Experience Design is a collaborative discipline. Early and
frequent collaboration will minimize drastic changes down the line.
1. Developers & Visual Designers
• What info do they need to build the site?
• What format do they need it to be in?
2. Business Analysts
• Are business requirements or site design driving the project?
• Understand features up front & circle back to check on use cases
& then detailed requirements

Documentation
Structure

Structure Documentation
The architecture of your prototype & business requirements
document affects how you keep them in sync.
Business Requirements Feature
• I work with BAs to structure the
Use Case Use Case
BRD hierarchically
RQ
RQ
RQ
RQ
BR
BR
• Features are the primary
component and they are
RQ
RQ
RQ
RQ
composed of use cases.
BR
BR
• Use cases are themselves
composed of detailed
requirements & business rules
• Some requirements & rules might
be tied to features instead or to
the system as a whole

Structure Documentation
The architecture of your prototype & business requirements
document affects how you keep them in sync.
Prototype/Functional Spec
• I split my prototypes into 3 sections: Pages, Page Types, &
Functionality. Only relevant sections get generated in the spec.
• Functionality contains flows associated with use cases.
• The pages associated with each flow display beneath it
• Page Types contains wireframes of page templates
• Pages contains instances of the page types with content required for
prototype testing. This section is NOT generated in the spec

Structure Documentation

Reference Management

Manage References
UX documentation can be very fluid up
until delivery, so only reference it at the
use case level in the business
requirements

Manage References
The key to keeping UX documentation & the BRD in sync is to
reference detailed requirements & rules in page notes & annotations
Page Notes
• I create three page notes sections:
Description, Business Rules, Error
Messages
• Description should be obvious :)
• Business Rules displays those rules
that apply to the page as a whole
• Error Messages displays any error
messages that can occur on the
page.
• Numbering rules & errors is
helpful.

Manage References
The key to keeping UX documentation & the BRD in sync is to
reference detailed requirements & rules in page notes & annotations
Annotations
• I create two annotation fields from
which to refer to the BRD, Business
Rules, Requirements
• The Business Rules field
summarizes the applicable business
rules & references them by number
• I also indicate here which error
messages are displayed & under
what conditions
• The Requirements field lists
applicable requirements by number

Manage References
Numbering. It can be a pain or a help. Here’s how I make it work
1. I do not allow requirements to be deleted or renumbered EVER!!!!
2. Strike requirements out and add numbers instead (after all, there are an
infinite number of them)
3. Append some letters to make it easy to search the document for them,
e.g., BR19.2, RQ37, etc.
4. In the annotations, refer to rules by summary & number and refer to
requirements just by number
5. If the business rules or requirements change, just use Axure’s Find
feature to find where they’re referenced and make updates to the design
as necessary
6. This works well in reverse too.

Other Approaches

My way is not the only way
I’ve been exposed to methods that many different organizations use
to keep their requirements & UX documentation in sync...
• Using a shared project without sharing to keep track of different
versions
• Integrating other requirements into the .DOCX file you generate the
functional spec to
• Business requirements before the spec
• Technical requirements after the spec

An interesting possibility...
Did you know you can export .CSV files of your widget and page
annotations from Axure? This gives you access to the unique IDs
Axure uses to keep track of widgets.
1. Click on Generate > More Generators and Configurations
2. Choose Add New > CSV Reports, & name the report
3. Select the report and hit Generate
4. Choose what you want to generate, and open the .CSV files in Excel
If you manage your business requirements in Excel, you can use its
VLOOKUP function search for widget IDs and pull in the contents
of specific annotation fields dynamically!

Discussion

Fred Beecher
fbeecher@gmail.com
@fred_beecher