With all these requirements, how do I keep track of what's going on?

At each step, it's important to continually review the project status and plan as they evolve, and change the requirements as needed. Among the best tools to ensure that your requirements process remains up-to-date in real time is by leveraging requirements traceability.

Requirements traceability allows you to demonstrate which requirements are directly linked or related to other requirements, and where each requirement stands within the review process. For example, at a given point in a project, some requirements may not yet have been started, while others may have been documented but not yet sent for review, while yet others are being reviewed by the stakeholders, and still others have already been approved and/or changed by the stakeholders. Oops—we forgot to mention the requirements that have already been developed, validated or tested, and deployed. Your real-time requirements management process requires that you keep updated snapshots of each requirement, so you always know what's been completed, and what still needs to be done.