Bridging the Requirements to Design Traceability Gap

Abstract

Requirement traceability ensures that software products meet their requirements and additionally makes the estimation of the consequences of requirement changes possible. In this article a case study analyses symptoms of this problem in the process model of ISO 12207, the foundation of SPICE (ISO 15504), and CMMi. Our analysis is directed at deriving a concept for the integrated extension of current traceability models with the aspect of documented design decisions. This integrated decision model is presented along with an additional case study which illustrates the advantages of this approach for traceability.