F2008-05-112
Traceability - Orientation in the Labyrinth of Links
Traceability starting from requirements down to the implementation is a must for all development projects today. But current concepts are to much influenced by Quality Assurance in order to address assessments instead of providing real support for the development. Concepts need to get more suited to the needs of forward engineering focusing on to impact of changing requirements. The presentations shows the best practices gathered in automotive industry to get traceability working and maintainable in a real project. The idea is based on a model of traceable artifacts and its atomized implementation connecting several tools used during development. What is necessary to gain a real benefit from traceability in the daily business of a project? - Traceability has to be consistent. It is not important to link elements in a fine grained manner but to do it completely on the chosen level of granularity. Several tools provide the possibility of linking elements but provide no guidance how to do it. Our proposal starts defining a traceability model that identifies the traceable assets. These assets can be different for each organization or even each type of project depending on the conditions like size and timeframe. The model defines the artifacts and there possible relationships. Typically the actual elements of these artifacts are stored in various tools like RM, Modeling or Change Management tools. Putting it all in one RM tools just to ease the traceability is very common but not sufficient for the development. Therefore the next step is to decide the location of the several artifacts and establish a way to maintain the traceability between these tools. Different scenarios to couple tools are possible. We will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of them. The key factor is to have to automate the creation and collection of traces and keep the artifacts with the tools there they are developed most efficiently. To develop an architecture in DOORS just for the benefit of linking things together is not a good idea. The solution is to generate the complete information for a stakeholder independent there the parts are stored. Therefore an elaborated model and an automated implementation adapted to the needs of the project or organization are the ingredients to establish beneficial traceability.
Poster presentation: Electronics