Early embedded (and other Information Technology) approaches (in particular, the Waterfall model) assumed that the product requirements were stable over time.

The high degree of innovation and market competition - which are significantly higher for embedded systems than for other industrial sectors - has made change a permanent feature of the design environment.

Change management tools should handle:

• Change requests
  including traceability and status, approval from different parties, etc.
• Dependencies between features
  It should be easy to see how changes to one feature will need to be validated with respect to impacts on other features.
• Workflow support