Traceability. Understand the relationships between artefacts.

What is traceability, what is it good for and what sorts of traceability are there?

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Traceability describes the comprehension of the relationships between artefacts of the development process

Traceability – some definitions

When talking about Traceability, three concepts are often blended together that are closely related:

  • Revision security concerns the tracing back of the history of artefacts that emerge in the development process. It is strongly anchored in the process standards like, for example, the German V-Modell XT or other waterfall models. To create revision security is a theme for the version and configuration management.
  • Compliance is understood at the traceability of the compliance of processes and standards. In regulated industries like the automotive sector, compliance is a central aspect and a prerequisite, for example, for a successful Automotive SPICE Assessment.
  • Traceability describes the comprehension of the relationships between artefacts of the development process.

According to ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765:2010, traceability is the ‘Discernable association among two or more logical entities, such as requirements, system elements, verifications and tasks.’ The Guide to Business Analysis Body of Knowledge BABOK v3 concretes this definition for the special case of Requirements Traceability: ‘The ability for tracking the relationships between sets of requirements and designs from the original stakeholder need to the actual implemented solution.’