![]() ![]() For example, you may want to include these three typical types of items: Requirements, Tests, and Defects. Once you know what you want your requirements traceability matrix to do for you, you can determine what content, or work items, should be included. ![]() Step 2: Decide what components should be included What are your goals for the matrix? And what type of traceability matrix do you need to meet that goal? Take another look at the different types of RTMs just discussed for inspiration. When creating a requirements traceability matrix, you want to start with the end in mind. Step 1: Decide what type of traceability matrix you need If bidirectional traceability were employed, the computer manufacturing company in the examples above would only need to look in one place for all the information in both the forward and backward RTMs. It is the optimal type of traceability because it gives teams full visibility from customer needs and requirements specifications through building, testing, changes, and defects-and back. They may also want to determine if any project requirements are out of scope, which they can therefore eliminate to meet the new weight requirement and still deliver on time.Ī bidirectional traceability matrix is the combination of both forward and backward traceability in one place. Additionally, teams can manage scope and avoid scope creep by ensuring lower-level needs directly trace to business, customer and/or regulatory requirements.Įxample: Continuing the example above, backward or reverse traceability gives teams producing the laptop the ability to look at the customer need that caused the change in the weight requirement. Tracing in this way allows testers to find gaps or missing requirements. This trace gives visibility into why specific artifacts were created and how different pieces of a system fit together. Any related requirements or resulting artifacts can be adjusted accordingly and test cases can be tweaked to ensure full test coverage.Ī backward traceability matrix (sometimes called a reverse traceability matrix) begins at verified work products and traces to upstream requirements and the customer needs they fulfill. Teams can use forward traceability to investigate the impact of change on the project. Additionally, it ensures that each requirement is not only satisfied but verified and validated.Įxample: Midway through the development process, a computer company lowers the weight requirement in its new laptop. Following forward traceability enables teams to be informed of changes and the potential impact of those changes at any time throughout development. The difference in types is significant based on the information the user needs to gather from the matrix: e.g., are all my subsystem requirements tracing to a system need? Have verifications for all my requirements passed? If we change this high-level requirement what are the impacts downstream?Ī forward traceability matrix traces from customer, or high-level, needs through to system and subsystem requirements to all corresponding downstream design artifacts and test cases. The difference is in which direction of events is the user able to view-forward in time, backward in time, or both. Each type of traceability matrix is created to ensure high-level requirements have been decomposed to appropriate levels of abstraction, lower-level requirements are tied to a higher-level need, and that the verification test cases are in place with their results. These requirements management tools automatically create trace relationships that develop a digital thread from high level requirements through low level requirements and testing.Īt a high level, there are three types of requirements traceability matrices: forward traceability, backward traceability, and bidirectional traceability. To ensure you have a concrete understanding of the most effective way to implement requirements traceability in your organization, this article will also compare manually managed RTMs with those managed by application lifecycle management (ALM) tools. Its purpose is to demonstrate that requirements have been satisfied by showing a direct trace from individual requirements to their implementation and verification RTM content may include business requirements, system and subsystem requirements, design elements, test cases, defects, as well as pertinent information about these items, e.g., status, depending on the kind of RTM employed. A requirements traceability matrix (RTM) is a document in which product teams track the relationships between requirements, verification, risks and other artifacts throughout the product development process.
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