“…Much existing commercial software (i.e. IBM DOORS 35 or JAMA ‡ ) and many research tools (i.e., ARCPP 23 , ROM Client 11 ) can manage requirement repositories 36,37,38,39 . An alternative method is the design structure matrix (DSM) (i.e., affinity matrix, A ∈ R n×n ), which represents the relationship between the requirements of a complex system for tracing potential changes propagation 40,41,42,43 .…”