Requirements tracing
Matthias Jarke · Communications of the ACM · 1998
In this ever-changing business and technology environment, the risk of inconsistencies in systems development and evolution multiplies. Requirements tracing is emerging as an effective bridge that aligns system evolution with changing stakeholder needs. It helps uncover unexpected problems and innovative opportunities and lays the groundwork for corporate knowledge management. It is defined as the ability to describe and follow the life of a requirement, in both a forward and backward direction, ideally through the whole systems life cycle. While research and practice have converged on these definitions, the level of traceability usage in organizations varies widely. Once it is established what degree of traceability is desirable, it makes sense to define traces as products that satisfy the desired traceability properties. Tracing then is a subprocess of evolutionary system development that supplies and exploits these traces. Establishing and maintaining requirements traceability is an expensive and politically sensitive endeavor developers are not exactly known for their love of documentation.