Requirements Traceability

Problem Size and Complexity

• Projects that have dealings with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must be aware of 200,000+ evolving requirements (Sampson, 1998).
• Space Station Freedom has over 1.5 million requirements.

To handle problems of the size and complexity, support for full product and process traceabililty is essential!

Product Traceability

Product traceability mechanisms connect requirements to elements of the design.

Figure 1. Components of the Requirements Engineering Process

Key Questions:

Two key questions need to be answered:

1. From the requirements side ... how is each requirement taken into account in thd design?
2. From the design side ... why is this design element needed?

Process Traceability

Traceability can also be applied to the sequence of decisions defining the underlying development process, e.g., traceablity of rationale to specific decisions, decisions to actions items ...etc.

Section 6-2: April, 2003.