Point-in-time requirement tracking for audit history
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current project management tracking systems are inefficient in maintaining a history of project requirements, leading to time-consuming and costly audits and compliance checks, as they do not effectively track and display past versions of requirements, requiring manual reconciliation of thousands of changes over time.
Innovation Solution
A point-in-time project management system that stores each requirement and its changes as separate records, allowing for the display of historical changes and current versions, enabling efficient auditing and compliance checks by tracking timestamps and user identities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If current project management tracking systems maintain a database of project requirements, then requirements can be accessed and modified by authorized users, but past versions of requirements are not available and manual reconciliation is required for audits
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the requirement history into discrete version records, where each change to a requirement creates a new version entry rather than overwriting the previous one. This segmentation allows auditors to access and review individual historical versions without manual reconciliation, directly resolving the information loss problem while eliminating time-consuming manual comparison processes.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary action by automatically capturing and storing requirement versions at the moment of change, before audits are needed. This proactive versioning eliminates the need for manual historical reconstruction during audits, simultaneously preserving information and reducing audit time.
2Reliability
If database architects recreate requirements for previous time periods, then historical data can be reviewed, but the process is time-consuming and expensive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates automated copies of requirement versions at each change point, storing them as historical records. These copies are maintained automatically without manual intervention, enabling reliable historical review while eliminating the time and cost associated with manual recreation processes, thus improving both reliability and productivity.
3Measurement precision
If data analysts painstakingly reconcile thousands of requirements for different time periods, then changes can be identified, but the process takes days or weeks
Solution Approach 1:
The system provides self-service by automatically tracking and documenting all requirement changes with version numbers, timestamps, and user identification. This automated self-documentation eliminates the need for analysts to manually reconcile thousands of requirements, maintaining measurement precision while reducing audit duration from days or weeks to minutes or hours.
Data Source
AI summary
A system, methods, and apparatus for point-in-time requirement tracking are disclosed. In an example embodiment, requirements for a project are stored in a database communicatively coupled to a server, the requirements including at least a first requirement stored in a first record and a second requirement stored in a second record. The server receives changes to the first requirement and the second requirement during the edit session and stores the changed first requirement to a third record and the changed second requirements to a fourth record. The server then provides the first and third records to a client device so that the client device can concurrently display the first requirement as specified in the first record and the first requirement as specified in the third record.