Conceptual Model

RCRE starts from the idea that requirements should be understood as consumable information artifacts.

A requirement becomes consumable when the intended reader can move through a minimum reader-side consumption chain:

Role-specific questioning ↓ Meaning recovery ↓ Follow-up action

This chain leads to the three dimensions of reader-centricity.

Role-Interrogativity

Role-Interrogativity concerns whether the requirement anticipates the entry questions of its intended readers.

Example reader questions include:

  • What does this requirement mean for my role?
  • What condition, behavior, or constraint must I consider?
  • Which responsibility boundary is involved?
  • Where should I look next if information is missing?

A requirement with high Role-Interrogativity does not need to answer every possible stakeholder question. It should answer or guide the questions that are relevant to the intended reader role.

Interpretability

Interpretability concerns whether the intended reader can recover meaning without excessive search, guesswork, or dependence on tacit organizational knowledge.

Interpretability is broader than linguistic clarity. A sentence may be grammatically clear but still difficult to interpret if it depends on inaccessible references, undefined internal terms, scattered artifacts, or implicit assumptions.

A requirement with high Interpretability provides meaning at the point of use or gives accessible and relevant links to recover that meaning.

Actionability

Actionability concerns whether the intended reader can determine what to do next.

Possible actions include:

  • implementation,
  • verification,
  • acceptance,
  • safety analysis,
  • interface negotiation,
  • review,
  • field response,
  • downstream refinement.

Actionability is related to verifiability, but it is broader. Verifiability asks whether compliance can be checked. Actionability asks whether the reader can derive an appropriate engineering action.