In Catalio, a Requirement is a clear, actionable statement that describes a capability your software must provide. Requirements are the foundation of your product specification, capturing what needs to be built and why it matters to your users.
Unlike traditional requirement documents, Catalio uses a structured user story format to ensure every requirement is grounded in real user needs and delivers measurable business value.
The User Story Format
Every requirement in Catalio follows the proven user story pattern:
As a [persona] I want [capability] So that [benefit]
This three-part structure ensures requirements are:
- User-centered: Always tied to a specific persona or user role
- Actionable: Describes a concrete capability or feature
- Value-focused: Explains the business benefit or outcome
Example: Well-Formed Requirements
Example 1: Authentication Requirement
- As a Product Manager
- I want to securely authenticate using OAuth2 with my Google account
- So that I can access the system without managing another password
Example 2: Reporting Requirement
- As a Business Analyst
- I want to export requirements data as CSV with all metadata fields
- So that I can analyze trends and share reports with stakeholders
Example 3: Collaboration Requirement
- As a Development Team Lead
- I want to receive real-time notifications when requirements are updated
- So that my team stays synchronized on changing specifications
Why User Story Format Matters
The user story format provides critical benefits:
- Clarity: Removes ambiguity by explicitly stating who, what, and why
- Prioritization: Benefits make it easier to assess business value
- Testability: Clear capabilities enable specific acceptance criteria
- Communication: Non-technical stakeholders understand the purpose
- Traceability: Personas link requirements to actual users
Traditional requirements like “The system shall provide export functionality” lack context. User stories answer: Who needs this? Why? What value does it deliver?
Requirement Lifecycle
Requirements in Catalio move through a well-defined lifecycle:
Draft
New requirements start as drafts—they’re being refined, discussed, and validated. Draft requirements can be freely edited as you gather stakeholder input and clarify details.
Active
Once validated and approved, requirements become active. Active requirements represent committed capabilities that teams are working to deliver. They form the authoritative specification for your product.
Deprecated
When a requirement is no longer needed but you want to preserve historical context, mark it deprecated. You’ll provide a reason explaining why it was phased out.
Superseded
As requirements evolve, newer versions may replace older ones. When this happens, create a superseding relationship linking the old requirement to its replacement. This maintains traceability and helps teams understand how specifications changed over time.
Archived
Requirements that are no longer relevant can be archived. Archived requirements are hidden from normal views but remain in the system for audit and compliance purposes.
Discovery and Validation
Understanding where requirements come from and how confident you are in them is critical for risk management.
Discovery Methods
Requirements can be discovered through:
- Explicit: Directly requested by stakeholders in meetings, emails, or formal specifications
- Implicit: Inferred from user behavior, analytics, competitive analysis, or domain research
Discovery Sources
Track the origin of each requirement:
- Stakeholder: Direct request from product owners, customers, or executives
- Research: User research, interviews, surveys, or usability testing
- Regulatory: Compliance requirements, legal mandates, or industry standards
- Technical: Infrastructure needs, performance constraints, or technical debt
- Competitive: Features driven by competitive analysis or market positioning
- Other: Internal innovation, strategic initiatives, or other sources
Confidence Levels
Assess your confidence in each requirement:
- High: Validated with multiple stakeholders, backed by data, or regulatory mandate
- Medium: Reasonable confidence based on single source or limited validation
- Low: Hypothesis requiring further investigation and validation
Confirmation Status
Track stakeholder agreement:
- Pending: Awaiting stakeholder review and approval
- Confirmed: Stakeholders have validated and approved
- Rejected: Stakeholders decided not to pursue (with reason)
- Investigation: Requires further research before decision
Prioritization Dimensions
Catalio uses three complementary dimensions to prioritize requirements:
Priority
Business urgency - How soon must this capability be delivered?
- Critical: Blocking release, regulatory requirement, or severe business impact
- High: Important for next release, significant value, or key stakeholder request
- Medium: Valuable but can wait for capacity, nice-to-have improvement
- Low: Future consideration, minimal immediate impact
Complexity
Implementation effort - How difficult is this to build?
- Simple: Straightforward implementation, low risk, minimal dependencies
- Moderate: Some complexity, manageable scope, standard patterns apply
- Complex: Significant effort, multiple components, requires design work
- Very Complex: Major undertaking, high risk, extensive cross-team coordination
Business Value
Expected impact - What value does this deliver?
- Critical: Core product differentiator, major revenue impact, strategic necessity
- High: Significant user value, competitive advantage, important efficiency gain
- Medium: Worthwhile improvement, moderate benefit to users or business
- Low: Marginal benefit, minor convenience, limited impact
Pro Tip: High priority + low complexity + high business value = quick wins. High priority + high complexity + low business value = reconsider the requirement.
Assumptions and Constraints
Requirements don’t exist in a vacuum. Catalio lets you capture the context that shapes each requirement.
Assumptions
What you’re assuming to be true:
- “Users have modern browsers with JavaScript enabled”
- “Integration APIs will maintain backward compatibility”
- “Peak traffic will not exceed 10,000 concurrent users”
Constraints
Known limitations or restrictions:
- “Must integrate with legacy authentication system”
- “Response time cannot exceed 200ms for search queries”
- “Development budget is $50,000”
Both assumptions and constraints are organized by category (technical, business, regulatory, etc.) using Catalio’s categorized map fields. This structure makes it easy to review all technical assumptions or identify regulatory constraints.
AI-Powered Features
Catalio leverages AI to help you write better requirements and manage them more effectively.
Semantic Search
Traditional keyword search misses requirements that use different terminology. Catalio’s semantic search understands meaning, not just words.
Search for “user authentication” and find requirements about:
- OAuth2 integration
- Single sign-on
- Password reset flows
- Multi-factor authentication
Behind the scenes, Catalio generates vector embeddings for each requirement, enabling searches that understand context and intent.
Sentiment Analysis
AI analyzes requirement text to detect stakeholder attitude:
- Positive: Enthusiastic, optimistic tone suggesting strong support
- Neutral: Factual, objective description without emotional indicators
- Concerned: Risk-aware, cautious language highlighting potential issues
- Negative: Resistant or critical tone suggesting opposition
Understanding sentiment helps you identify requirements that need more stakeholder alignment or risk mitigation.
Quality Assessment
AI evaluates requirements across multiple dimensions:
- Completeness: Are all necessary details provided?
- Clarity: Is the requirement unambiguous and understandable?
- Overall Quality: Comprehensive assessment combining multiple factors
You’ll receive specific improvement suggestions and a list of missing elements, helping you refine requirements before development begins.
Auto-Categorization
AI analyzes requirement content and suggests:
- Appropriate priority level with reasoning
- Estimated complexity based on scope and technical concepts
- Expected business value from benefit analysis
- Relevant semantic tags for categorization and search
Use these suggestions as a starting point, then adjust based on your domain knowledge and organizational context.
Summary and Tag Generation
AI creates concise summaries (max 200 characters) perfect for:
- Quick scanning in requirement lists
- AI agent context windows
- Executive dashboards
- Integration with external tools
AI also generates semantic tags across categories:
- Functional Area: authentication, reporting, data-management
- Technical Concepts: api, database, ui, security
- Domain Terms: workflow, compliance, analytics
- User Actions: create, view, export, configure
- Features: dashboard, notifications, search
These tags power advanced filtering and enable AI agents to understand requirement relationships.
Privacy and Control
All AI features respect your data privacy. Each requirement has an AI-accessible toggle that controls whether AI agents can process it. Requirements marked as non-AI-accessible are excluded from AI analysis and vector search, ensuring sensitive specifications remain confidential.
Evolving Requirements (Superseding)
Requirements naturally evolve as you learn more about user needs and technical possibilities. Catalio’s superseding feature maintains complete traceability through these changes.
How Superseding Works
When a requirement needs significant changes that would alter its meaning:
- Create a new requirement with the updated specification
- Mark the old requirement as superseded
- Link the old requirement to the new one (superseding relationship)
- Document the reason for the change
- Add notes explaining what changed and why
Example: Requirement Evolution
Original Requirement (REQ-001)
- As a User
- I want to export data as CSV
- So that I can analyze it in Excel
- Status: Superseded by REQ-042
New Requirement (REQ-042)
- As a User
- I want to export data as CSV, JSON, or Excel with custom field selection
- So that I can analyze it in multiple tools and choose relevant fields
- Supersedes: REQ-001
- Reason: User feedback showed need for multiple formats and field selection
- Status: Active
Both requirements remain in the system, but the superseding relationship makes it clear that REQ-042 is the current specification.
Benefits of Superseding
- Audit Trail: Complete history of how requirements changed
- Compliance: Demonstrate decision-making process for regulated industries
- Learning: Understand why specifications evolved
- Conflict Resolution: Trace conflicting requirements to source of divergence
- Impact Analysis: Identify all downstream artifacts affected by changes
Best Practices
Writing Effective Requirements
Do:
- ✅ Start with a specific persona (not “user” or “administrator”)
- ✅ Describe one clear capability per requirement
- ✅ Explain the measurable business benefit
- ✅ Use concrete, testable language
- ✅ Include assumptions and constraints that affect implementation
- ✅ Link related requirements using superseding relationships
Don’t:
- ❌ Combine multiple capabilities in one requirement
- ❌ Use vague terms like “good,” “fast,” “user-friendly” without definition
- ❌ Specify implementation details (that’s for design)
- ❌ Create requirements without a clear persona
- ❌ Omit the benefit statement
- ❌ Leave discovery source or method blank
Example: Before and After
Before (Vague)
- Title: “Better search”
- Description: “Users want search to be faster and return better results”
After (Clear)
- Title: “Semantic search for requirements”
- As a Business Analyst
- I want to search requirements using natural language queries that understand meaning, not just keywords
- So that I can find related requirements even when they use different terminology, reducing duplicate work by 50%
- Priority: High
- Complexity: Complex
- Business Value: High
- Source: Stakeholder (from PM feedback)
- Confidence: High (validated with 5 analysts)
Linking to Personas and Use Cases
Requirements don’t stand alone:
- Link to Personas to specify exactly who needs this capability
- Define Use Cases that describe specific scenarios and acceptance criteria
- Connect to Components that implement the requirement
This network of relationships ensures requirements are validated, testable, and traceable through your entire product lifecycle.
Policy Compliance and Governance
Requirements often need to comply with organizational policies covering security, compliance, technical standards, and business rules. Catalio’s Policy framework enables you to link governance policies to requirements, ensuring compliance from the start.
How Policies Constrain Requirements:
Example 1: Security Policy
Requirement: "User Login via Email/Password"
Policy: "Multi-Factor Authentication Required" (Mandatory)
Impact: Requirement must implement MFA to be approved
Rationale: Protects against credential theft and unauthorized access
Example 2: Compliance Policy
Requirement: "Export User Data to JSON"
Policy: "GDPR Data Subject Rights" (Mandatory)
Impact: Must implement GDPR Article 20 (Right to Data Portability)
Rationale: Ensures compliance with EU data privacy regulations
Example 3: Technical Policy
Requirement: "GET /api/v1/users Endpoint"
Policy: "RESTful API Design Standards" (Recommended)
Impact: Endpoint should follow RESTful conventions
Rationale: Maintains architectural consistency across platform
When to Link Policies:
- ✅ Requirement handles regulated data (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS)
- ✅ Requirement involves security-sensitive functionality (auth, payments)
- ✅ Requirement requires budget approval or stakeholder sign-off
- ✅ Requirement impacts system architecture or technical standards
Enforcement Levels:
- Mandatory: Requirement cannot be approved until policy compliance addressed
- Recommended: Warning shown, can proceed with documented rationale
- Optional: Linked for reference and context
Learn more about creating policies, linking them to requirements, and tracking compliance in Policies: Governance and Compliance Framework.
Next Steps
Now that you understand requirements, explore how to:
- Define Personas - Create user roles that requirements serve
- Write Use Cases - Specify scenarios and acceptance criteria
- Link Policies - Ensure compliance with governance and standards
- Organize with Components - Map requirements to architecture
Pro Tip: Start with a small batch of high-priority requirements, validate them thoroughly with stakeholders, then expand. Quality beats quantity—10 well-formed requirements are more valuable than 100 vague ones.
Support
Questions about requirements? We’re here to help:
- Documentation: Continue reading about Personas and Use Cases
- In-App Help: Look for the 🤖 AI assistant in the requirements interface
- Email: support@catalio.com
- Community: Share best practices with other Catalio users