Requirements Management
Requirements Management is the central entity of the TOGAF ADM wheel — visible in the diagram as the hub all wheel spokes connect to. It is not a step; it is a central persistent store that runs continuously throughout the wheel’s life.
Requirements store is usually maintained on the organizational level, not one-per-project. Requirements on the higher level of abstractions: Conceptual or Logical have wider blast radius. Across projects.
Every ADM step begins by reading what Requirements Management currently holds, associated with that step in that project. Current step may add to it — concerns, constraints, and open questions that cannot be resolved at the current level of abstraction (Taxonomy Category, are logged there rather than just deferred informally or dropped. The next step picks them up.
This is what gives the continuity. As an example. A Technology concern raised during the Business Architecture step is not lost — it is logged in Requirements Management and resolved at the ADM Physical or Implementation step where it belongs. Nothing falls through the gap between steps.
Requirement hierarchy and traceability
Requirements are hierarchical. Each ADM deliverable references the REQs it satisfies. Each REQ may in turn reference other REQs. This forms a dependency graph across the entire wheel — the traceability chain of the process.
Example: Step A produces REQ-001 “the solution must use modular, domain-driven decomposition”. Step C produces REQ-012 “implement as a modular monolith”, which references REQ-001 as its origin. The chain is auditable at any point: follow the REQ references from any deliverable back to the Conceptual declaration that justified it.
A deliverable references REQuirement as a governance signal — either in the Conceptual architecture or an assumption that needs to be made explicit.
This is the mechanism behind CMM Level 5: the process is measurable and self-improving because every decision traces to a requirement and every requirement to its origin. Gaps become visible; the process closes them systematically.
DBJ recommends REQ identifiers and requirement-to-requirement traceability as the minimum governance practice. If an organisation already has an established requirements management practice and tooling, that practice takes precedence — the DBJ ADM integrates with it rather than replacing it. What must be preserved regardless of tooling is the traceability: every requirement must reference what it satisfies or requires.