In
software development
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development inv ...
, a traceability matrix (TM)
is a document, usually in the form of a table, used to assist in determining the completeness of a relationship by correlating any two
baselined documents using a many-to-many relationship comparison.
It is often used with high-level
requirement
In product development and process optimization, a requirement is a singular documented physical or functional need that a particular design, product or process aims to satisfy. It is commonly used in a formal sense in engineering design, incl ...
s (these often consist of marketing requirements) and detailed requirements of the product to the matching parts of
high-level design, detailed design,
test plan, and
test cases.
A requirements traceability matrix may be used to check if the current project requirements are being met, and to help in the creation of a
request for proposal,
software requirements specification,
various deliverable documents, and project plan tasks.
[Carlos, Tom (October 21, 2008). Requirements Traceability Matrix - RTM. PM Hut, October 21, 2008. Retrieved October 17, 2009 from http://www.pmhut.com/requirements-traceability-matrix-rtm.]
Common usage is to take the identifier for each of the items of one document and place them in the left column. The identifiers for the other document are placed across the top row. When an item in the left column is related to an item across the top, a mark is placed in the intersecting cell. The number of relationships are added up for each row and each column. This value indicates the mapping of the two items. Zero values indicate that no relationship exists. It must be determined if a relationship must be made. Large values imply that the relationship is too complex and should be simplified.
To ease the creation of traceability matrices, it is advisable to add the relationships to the source documents for both backward and forward traceability.
That way, when an item is changed in one baselined document, it is easy to see what needs to be changed in the other.
Sample traceability matrix
See also
*
Requirements traceability
*
Software engineering
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development.
A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ' ...
*
List of requirements engineering tools
References
External links
Bidirectional Requirements Traceabilityby Linda Westfall
Why Software Requirements Traceability Remains a Challengeby Andrew Kannenberg and Dr. Hossein Saiedian
{{Software engineering
Software testing
Software requirements