Software

Requirement
Engineering
WEEK # 10
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Traceability

Relationship to other development documents

 An important quality criterion is traceability of relationships between

requirements documents and other documents (e.g., business process model,
test plans, or design plans).

 These documents could have been created in previous development phases, in

subsequent development phases, or concurrently with the requirements
documents.
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Traceable Quality Criteria for Requirements

 Traceable: [ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148:2011] A requirement is traceable if its origin

as well as its realization and its relation to other documents can be retraced.

 This can be done by means of unique requirement identifiers.

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Advantages of Traceable Requirements

 Verifiability
 Identification of gold-plated solutions in the system
 Identification of gold-plated solutions in the requirements
 Impact Analysis
 Reuse
 Accountability
 Maintenance
See more at Book Page # 122-123
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Classification of Traceability Relations

 Pre-Requirements-specification (Pre-RS) Traceability

 Post-Requirements-specification (Post-RS) Traceability
 Traceability between Requirements
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Representation of Requirements Traceability

 Text-based References and Hyperlinks

 Trace Matrices
 Trace Graphs
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Representation of Requirements Traceability
(Cont.)

Text-based References and Hyperlinks

 Annotate the target artifact as a textual reference in the requirement (initial artifact) or
to establish a hyperlink between the initial artifact and the target artifact.
 When linking artifacts, different types of hyperlinks with specific link semantics can be
used.
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Representation of Requirements Traceability
(Cont.)
Trace Matrices
(Sources of Requirements, Development Artifacts, Requirements)

If a trace link
exists between
an initial artifact
in row n and a
Requirements target artifact in
column m, cell
(n, m) is marked
in the trace
matrix.
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Representation of Requirements Traceability
(Cont.)

Trace Graphs
 all nodes represent artifacts, and all edges represent relationships between artifacts.
 The distinction between different artifacts and types of traceability can be realized
by means of assigning different attributes to the nodes and edges of the graph.
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