Fan Tutorial 1 - Specify Product - Part 2

This is the Continuation of the Fan tutorial - Specify Product - part 1 where we cover the topics of the common flows such as “Review and Improve Requirements” and “Approve and Release Specifications”. In this part, we cover, how you can update or manage requirements, create discussions, reviews and analysis blocks of requirements and share them.

This part would take around 15-25 mins.

(4) Update, Manage and Review Requirements

Throughout the development process, it's common for requirements to evolve and be updated based on various factors such as stakeholder input and design constraints. In Valispace, you can directly update requirements by double-clicking on the column fields or within the details section of the requirement, and all changes are recorded in the History for easy reference. Note also that on any change the requirement is increased by one minor version (please check Version and Releases for more information on this).

Collaboration and reviews are crucial to ensure the requirements are thoroughly discussed and evaluated. Valispace offers powerful features like discussions, Tasks, and the review center to facilitate these crucial steps.

In the following steps, we will demonstrate how you can effectively utilize discussions to engage in meaningful conversations with your groups or colleagues, fostering collaboration and ensuring the best possible outcome for your project.

Creating Discussions on a requirement

To create a discussion on the requirement R-Fan-002, follow the following steps.

• Click on the … on the Actions columns and hover over to + Add and select :discussion: Discussion

• Upon clicking the icon, a dialogue box opens. Here, type @ and you will have the list of users in the dropdown. Select any user and copy and paste the following question is it feasible to have propellers for 50g or do we need more mass allocation?

• Click on Add and then Close.

The steps to raise a discussion are illustrated in the tutorial below.

Creating a new discussion

Once you tag your colleague using @ and post a discussion, the user will receive a notification under the icon :notifications: , where he can access the discussion and write comments to follow up.

Creating reviews on specifications/requirements [ OPTIONAL FOR TUTORIAL]

Optional for the Tutorial

In this part of the tutorial, we will explore how to use the review centre effectively to create formal reviews on individual requirements/specifications with your teammates. By adding multiple reviewers and approvers, you can gather valuable feedback on the quality of the requirements. Let's get started!

• Hover to the stakeholder requirements and select the box near the “Identifier” Column (1). This action selects all the requirements within the specification

• Once selected, Click on the … icon on the Actions column (2) of any requirement. A new dialog box opens, where you can select the Start Review.

Check out Figure Creating a new review to see how to bulk select Requirements.

Once selected, You have a dialog box where you will go through a 5-step process. You can fill in the details randomly here.

Step 1: Since we have selected all the requirements, we can skip this step and click Description >

Step 2: In the description section, provide the Name as Review_STR and leave the instructions empty and click on the Assign > any of your colleagues

Step 3: Add your colleagues as reviewers and approvers and click on Due date >

Step 4: Provide a random date on the due date field

Step 5: On the message field, you can write a message to the reviewer and approver and click on Send

Tutorial to set up a Review:

Once, the reviews are created, the reviewer and the approver receives the notification mentioning that they have been added as an reviewer and approver. The tutorial below will show you briefly how the reviewer can review the requirements.

Tutorial to review a Review:

(5) Validating Requirements

In the early stages of the product lifecycle, it's crucial to validate requirements before moving forward with the design process. Valispace provides a convenient way to manage requirement states using State columns. By default, Valispace includes states like Draft, In Review, and Final, but users can add additional states based on their specific needs.

The following steps will show you how to assign the "Draft" state to newly added requirements, ensuring a structured and organized workflow.

Hover over to the Fan_Specs

• On the side, click Columns (1) in the right corner and tick State(2) if it is not selected. Doing this action shows the state column (see Figure Enable State Column).

• Tick the small rectangular box on the top left of the Identifier column. This selects all the requirements within the specification.

• Now, hover over to the state column and double-click on the first cell of the R-Fan-001 state column. Upon clicking, a drop-down with the “state” options list is shown.

• Select Draft and click Yes on the confirmation dialog box. This bulk edit adds the draft status to all the requirements.

These steps are illustrated in the click-through below.

Adding the “State” Attribute information

You can perform the reviews through the review center feature and change the “state” accordingly. Also you can create automatic transition of states from “Final” to “draft” or “In Review” whenever there is an edit on the requirement. You can find more information in this article here.

(6) Create an Analysis/documentation within Valispace 

As an engineer, you might have to create an Analysis to leverage your engineering data and document the properties of your design. You can use our inbuilt Analyses module for it.

Add a descriptive Analysis.

• Go to the Analyses Module (see Figure Accessing the Analysis Module) by clicking the Analyses button (1) in the left sidebar.

• Create a new analysis by clicking on + Documents(2).

• In the Create document dialog box (see Figure Creating a Project Summary), name the analysis as Project_Summary(1) and click Create(2).

• The analysis consists of blocks of text, images, videos, charts, or tables. Click inside the existing block 1. Write heading... and type  Introduction

• Click on the second block Click to add new block and select Text then Normal text to add an introduction text.

• The analysis content is automatically saved while you type (see FIgure Adding Information to the Document)

PowerUserTip: click + Folder in the left navigation pane to create a Folder to organize your Reports.

Creating Table of Requirements - Stakeholder specifications

You can create a table of requirements from the stakeholder specifications. To create a table,

• Select the Click to add new block

• Select the option Tables on the popup dialog box. Here, choose Requirements.

Now valispace creates a table with all the requirements from the project. Also, we can select the list of columns we would like to have in the tables. Since we would like to have only the stakeholder specification, we can use the filter option for the specification. This is demonstrated in the following tutorial.

Adding “Stakeholders requirements” to our analysis

Sharing the Analysis Module

You can share the analysis module with your colleagues or stakeholders through the option “Share”. To do that

• Click on the three vertical dots in the upper right corner

• Select the option Share from the dropdown menu

• Select any user from the drop-down and click on Create new link(1). This creates a new link which you can copy and share with your colleagues or stakeholders(2).

Check out Figure Creating a Link to see how this is done.

Next Steps?

Congratulations! You now know how to specify a product in Valispace.

You can still improve your Desktop Fan project. Here are some ideas:

• Use ValiAssistant to “Breakdown Requirements” for you

• Use ValiAssistant to “Create Summary” of your requirements in the analysis module.
  

Look at our Fan Tutorial 2 to learn how to design a Desktop fan with the System Design Module. 

Spoiler Alert: the documentation automatically updates itself whenever you change a Vali.