Requirements Traceability: A Systematic Literature Review
Tshepho Koboyatshwene, Yirsaw Ayalew · 2025
Software developers employ requirements traceability to ensure that each requirement is tracked throughout the software development life cycle, providing a clear link between requirements and the final product. Despite its importance in software development, studies show that there are a number of challenges facing requirements traceability. In this paper, we provide a systematic review of requirements traceability methods and tool support covering 2013 – 2024 from the major databases. The findings show that methods and tools covering the software development life cycle are missing, and evaluations based on industrial case studies are meagre, which may lower the confidence in applying the proposed approaches in practice. Moreover, the paper highlights the need for developing requirements traceability methods supporting agile and DevOps practices.