Verifying the System

In Requirements Portal, requirements are connected to one or more systems, or subsystems. These systems are verified using Verifications and Validations (V&V) activities. A Block's requirement can be verified with single or multiple V&V activities. Each activity can be linked to one or several requirements and can verify one or more systems.

In this part of the tutorial, we will discuss how to conduct V&V activities using Requirements Portal and explain the following:

• How to create V&V activities.

• How to link V&V activities to requirements.

• How to run an activity.

• Demonstrate the automatic verification methods in Requirements Portal.

Creating and Loading Views for Verification

Requirements Portal offers various pre-selected attributes, such as Identifier, Text, Parents, Children, Type, State, V&V Status, V&V Activities, V&V Blocks, Tags, and Properties. However, this may lead to excessive horizontal scrolling on smaller screens. You can generate custom views with only the essential attributes to streamline the Verification process. Let's create a new view for the Verification and load it.

1. Open the Fan_Spec specification (under the Requirements entry in the project tree).

2. Hover the cursor over any column header, click the  icon that appears, and then click the  icon to show a list of available columns.

   

3. Deselect all columns in the list and select only the following columns:

   • Text

   • Parents

   • Children

   • V&V Activities

   • V&V Status

   • V&V Rules

   • Applicable Block

   • Tags

   You can also select/deselect the attributes using the Columns pane accessed from the right-hand side. This approach is shown to make you also aware of the additional options you have on the column headers, such as filters and table sizing options. For instance, the icon provides filtering options for a specific column.

4. Right-click in the table and select the Save view command from the context menu. In the Save current view window that opens, enter Verification_View as the View name, select Private, and then click .

   

   All selected columns, column widths, and applied filters will be saved in a dedicated view. Once the view is saved, you can load it by right-clicking in the table and selecting the corresponding entry in the Load View sub-menu.

Adding a Verification & Validation Activity to a Requirement

Requirements Portal offers three columns dedicated to the verification and validation of requirements (apart from additional columns like Compliance and Compliance Comment or even custom columns related to verification activities):

• V&V Activities – displays the associated V&V activities to the requirement.

• V&V Status – indicates the overall status of verification of the requirement.

• V&V Rules – automatic verification based on vali comparison between the requirement and the Blocks Module.

1. Expand the Verifications & Validations entry in the project tree and select Activities.

2. Click the  button. In the Create V&V Activity window that opens, enter Mass Inspection into the Name field and This activity measures the mass of the Valifan. into the Description field, and then click .

   

3. Now we link the new activity to one of our requirements from the Requirements Module. Click on the name of the activity in the Name column and click the Requirements Statuses control at the top of the page.

   

4. Click the  button at the top left. In the Link Requirement window that opens, select R-Fan-001 in the Requirement drop-down and select Valifan from the Block drop-down, and then click .

   

5. Let’s assume you carried out the mass inspection as per the instructions of the activity and now we want to set the verification status to verified. To do this, double-click the cell in the Status column and select Verified from the drop-down.

   

With this, we have successfully created a manual verification activity. Let us now look at how to have automatic verifications on our requirements that check block valis against requirement valis.

Verifying the System Automatically Using Rules

1. Open the Fan_Spec specification (under the Requirements entry in the project tree).

2. Hover the cursor over the 300 g vali in the Text column for the R-Fan-001 requirement and check its name in the pop-up. This name will be used when creating a rule in which this vali will be compared with a vali from the Blocks Module.

   

   Valis in requirements can be edited by clicking the  icon in the pop-up. You can adjust parameters such as name, margins, etc.

3. Double-click the cell in the V&V Rules column for the R-Fan-001 requirement. The V&V Rules window will open where you can define a rule to compare our requirement Valifan mass of 300 g with the mass vali of the Valifan system from the Blocks Module. Use the $ symbol to reference the valis. In the pop-up that appears, you can search for valis by typing their names. Define the rule as follows:

   $Valifan.Mass<$R-Fan_001.maximum_fan_mass

   Note how Requirements Portal fetches the real associated values below the text box.

   

4. Click the  button in the V&V Rules window and then close the window. In the table, you will see that we now have one rule (which is verified) associated with the requirement and a total of 2/2 V&V status (since the mass inspection activity has also been verified previously).

   

Next Steps?

Congratulations, you now know your way around Requirements Portal!

You can continue improving your desktop fan project. Here are some ideas:

• Add Compliance to your requirements.

• Add a few parent/children relationships between requirements, check the connections graph, and notice the color codes on the requirement.

• Add a solar panel block to make the fan portable. You can make the maximum rotational speed dependent on the sun angle of the solar panel.