Adapting traceability environments to project-specific needs

This article focuses on adapting traceability environments to project-specific needs. Requirements traceability is defined as the ability to describe and follow the life of a requirement, in both a forward and backward direction. While present traceability environments do offer some flexibility in the definition of trace data types, they do not lend themselves easily to a situated approach to defining trace capture and usage strategies. To empower the project-specific definition of data types, a traceability environment must provide capabilities to define new data types and to adjust predefined types according to project-specific needs. Moreover, it should systematically support the project manager in considering recorded experiences and the actual needs. Establishing project-specific traceability definitions does not guarantee that traces are correctly captured and used. To ensure definition-conform trace recording and usage, definitions must be communicated to stakeholders performing the process and must be applied in the corresponding situations throughout the project. INSET: Examples of Project-Specific Trace Capture and Usage.