Effective and efficient requirement traceability in the software development and Information Technology industry

• Main Author: Shereni, Tafadzwa
• Other Authors: Jay, Ian
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2015
• Subjects: Project Management
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/14129

Requirements traceability has been identified as a quality factor and a characteristic a system should possess and include as a non-functional requirement. Requirements engineering processes should always include methods and tools of maintaining traces and relationships between requirements and product artefacts. To investigate the extent to which requirements traceability is used in software and information technology projects, a theoretical model of requirements traceability was presented in this research. Five organizations were investigated through semi-structured interviews and their requirements tracing practices were compared with the theoretical model. The extent to which organizations apply requirements traceability practices in their projects differs and as a result they were categorised as inactive, dormant and active users in this research. The advent of agile development methods is one of the major factors affecting requirements traceability practices. Among other recommended areas of further research, there is need for future research to look at how agile development and traditional methods can be implemented together in requirement tracing practices.