Requirements engineering (RE) is an essential process of the systems and software engineering life cycles. RE has been established as an ISO/IEC standard life cycle process in both ISO/IEC 15288:2008, Systems and software engineering — System life cycle processes and ISO/IEC 12207:2008, Systems and software engineering — Software life cycle processes.

This Technical Report provides guidance on desirable capabilities of RE tools. It supplements ISO/IEC 14102:2008, Information technology — Guideline for the evaluation and selection of CASE tools, which details a set of evaluation criteria for CASE tools without referencing a specific activity or service area.