Requirements Management has been established to ensure seamless specifications along the product creation process. In order to manage complex specification processes and requirements dependencies companies introduced requirements management systems. The generic „Requirement Interchange Format (RIF)” was created to enable the exchange of information across different requirements management systems.

In summer 2008 the prostep ivip association initiated the project group IntRIF in order to increase the acceptance and application of RIF by transferring the recommendation into an international standard. With the successful standardization in April 2011 OMG ReqIF 1.0.1 has been published as the official successor of RIF.

Two project groups are currently working on the enhancement of the format and its application. In 2011 the ReqIF Implementor Forum was established for realizing strong technological basis. In 2016 the community of relevant user representatives then consequently made the next step: Specifying relevant use cases for ReqIF application in industry.

To evaluate the feasibility of requirement data exchange with ReqIF, the two groups decided to perform a benchmark. Focus of this benchmark is the exchange of formatted content and embedded objects in a requirement specification. The benchmark was run at prostep ivip site with support of the 6 participating vendors. The criteria and test data were defined by the users. This is the first attempt by prostep ivip and VDA on a neutral evaluation of the ReqIF data exchange with multiple requirement management systems and connector tools.

Advanced functionalities and use cases may be tested in planned upcoming benchmarks.