Towards automated traceability maintenance

Traceability relations support stakeholders in understanding the dependencies between artifacts created during the development of a software system and thus enable many development-related tasks. To ensure that the anticipated benefits of these tasks can be realized, it is necessary to have an up-to-date set of traceability relations between the established artifacts. This goal requires the creation of traceability relations during the initial development process. Furthermore, the goal also requires the maintenance of traceability relations over time as the software system evolves in order to prevent their decay. In this paper, an approach is discussed that supports the (semi-) automated update of traceability relations between requirements, analysis and design models of software systems expressed in the UML. This is made possible by analyzing change events that have been captured while working within a third-party UML modeling tool. Within the captured flow of events, development activities comprised of several events are recognized. These are matched with predefined rules that direct the update of impacted traceability relations. The overall approach is supported by a prototype tool and empirical results on the effectiveness of tool-supported traceability maintenance are provided.     

More than Just "Lost in Translation"

Easy capture of requirements in multiple digital formats, combined with the continuing use of physical documents, opens the way to documentation using many and varied sign systems or abstract media. Transfers between documents occur as requirements become fixed. Simultaneously, media transformations alter content, sometimes in irreversible ways. Identifying and choosing particular transformations becomes an essential part of the requirements process.     

In search of the system concept

Requirements documents are often tedious to construct, difficult to manage, and poor for mediating communication between stakeholders during a software development project. Using system concepts can simplify the way you determine, handle, and communicate requirements in a busy world. They could even help you design more innovative software systems.