Software and Systems Traceability

Software and Systems Traceability provides a comprehensive description of the practices and theories of software traceability across all phases of the software development lifecycle. The term software traceability is derived from the concept of requirements traceability. Requirements traceability is the ability to track a requirement all the way from its origins to the downstream work products that implement that requirement in a software system. Software traceability is defined as the ability to relate the various types of software artefacts created during the development of software systems. Traceability relations can improve the quality of a product being developed, and reduce the time and cost of development. More specifically, traceability relations can support evolution of software systems, reuse of parts of a system by comparing components of new and existing systems, validation that a system meets its requirements, understanding of the rationale for certain design and implementation decisions, and analysis of the implications of changes in the system.

Traceability supports numerous activities in the engineering of software systems. For example, pre-requirements traceability is used to demonstrate that a product meets the stakeholders’ stated requirements, or that it complies with a set of government regulations. Other forms of traceability are used to demonstrate the relationships between requirements and software artefacts such as design models, source code, and test cases.

Over the last 20 years, in order to overcome the significant challenges in creating, maintaining and using traceability, the research community has been actively addressing traceability issues through the following:

• Exploring topics related to automating the traceability process
• Developing strategies for achieving cost-effective traceability
• Supporting the capture and evolution of traceability links
• Visualizing traceability and advancing its effectiveness for end users
• Developing traceability practices that apply across a wide range of domains

Divided into five sections, Traceability Strategy, Traceability Creation, Traceability Maintenance, Traceability Use and Traceability Challenges, Software and Systems Traceability provides a comprehensive reference for traceability theory, research and practice and presents an introduction to the concepts and theoretical foundations of traceability.