8. A method for managing data associated with a vehicle design and its requirements, said method comprising: maintaining a list of features which may be used by any product development team; maintaining a list of software functions which have been created to support each feature; maintaining a data dictionary containing a list of data items which may be used in all features or software functions, where the data dictionary includes as attributes for each data item a name and a description of the data item, a data item category which identifies the data item as either constant or variable, a data item type which identifies the data item as either integer or floating decimal point, a minimum value and a maximum value for the data item, an indication of whether the data item is an array, an owner feature name, an owner software function name, an owner person name, an initial value, a fail soft value, an indication of whether the data item is a trigger for an action in a software function, a list of consumer software functions, a scale factor to be applied to the data item, and a time period which indicates how long the owner software function takes to execute; maintaining a glossary of technical terms which may be used in any product design, feature development, and requirements development; maintaining an acronym library containing a list of acronyms which may be used in any product design, feature development, and requirements development; storing the list of features, the list of software functions, the data dictionary, the glossary, and the acronym library in a relational database on a server computer; and proposing a new entry for inclusion in the data dictionary, the glossary, or the acronym library, including review and approval by a team of appropriate people before the new entry can be used by others.
8. A method for managing data associated with a vehicle design and its requirements, said method comprising: maintaining a list of features which may be used by any product development team; maintaining a list of software functions which have been created to support each feature; maintaining a data dictionary containing a list of data items which may be used in all features or software functions, where the data dictionary includes as attributes for each data item a name and a description of the data item, a data item category which identifies the data item as either constant or variable, a data item type which identifies the data item as either integer or floating decimal point, a minimum value and a maximum value for the data item, an indication of whether the data item is an array, an owner feature name, an owner software function name, an owner person name, an initial value, a fail soft value, an indication of whether the data item is a trigger for an action in a software function, a list of consumer software functions, a scale factor to be applied to the data item, and a time period which indicates how long the owner software function takes to execute; maintaining a glossary of technical terms which may be used in any product design, feature development, and requirements development; maintaining an acronym library containing a list of acronyms which may be used in any product design, feature development, and requirements development; storing the list of features, the list of software functions, the data dictionary, the glossary, and the acronym library in a relational database on a server computer; and proposing a new entry for inclusion in the data dictionary, the glossary, or the acronym library, including review and approval by a team of appropriate people before the new entry can be used by others. 12. The method of claim 8 wherein the owner feature name is selected from the list of features, and the owner software function name is selected from the list of software functions.