Requirements traceability

Traceability ( traceability even or english Traceability) referred in product development traceability of requirements throughout the development process and is therefore part of requirements management. Traceability is often supported due to the complexity of the overall requirements through requirements management software.

Introduction

In the development of complex products such as cars and airplanes very many requests are created on different levels of abstraction in analysis and design. The aim is to create a requirements elicitation in this complex work that is complete, clear and free of redundancies. Traceability is a method to make it work.

For example, a fundamental requirement "The plane is all common wireless standards support " loud. On the level of abstraction, including the major wireless standards are listed and including the necessary conditions for it. These conditions may be removed by tests. Reference should be made the same in design to this request, in order to avoid over engineering. The tests and the design can be characterized on the basic requirement " The system should support all major wireless standards " are returned.

This separation also has the advantage that redundancies can be avoided if, for example, different wireless standards have the same acceptance criteria: The respective criterion is only listed once and all wireless standards that require this acceptance criterion, refer to this.

In addition, traceability allows for changes (eg to an additional wireless standard are supported) to determine the impact of this change. It should be ensured that even after the changes the remaining requirements continue to be met. The cause of the change should also be listed, so that the change is to follow.