Requirements Traceability for Effective Project Tracking

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Requirements Traceability

What Is Requirements Traceability?

Requirements traceability ensures accurate product development by tracking and managing requirements throughout the SDLC. By decomposing and bidirectionally linking requirements to each other and other artifacts like test cases, code, and other work items, teams gain comprehensive traceability and verification with Parasoft solutions.

Testing and Requirements Traceability

Parasoft automates linking requirements to test cases to ensure comprehensive verification and validation, which provides clear traceability, enhances quality, verifies functionality matches specifications, and supports regulatory compliance. Our approach builds stakeholder confidence by demonstrating thorough and focused testing aligned with all specified requirements.

Integrate Quality Into the RM Process

Align requirements with verification artifacts like test cases, test results, code reviews, and defects that complete and enrich the requirements management (RM) process.

Jump to: Embed Quality in the Requirement Management Process »

Expose Gaps in Test Coverage

Manage test cases efficiently with interactive, actionable reporting dashboards to quickly update tests when requirements change and highlight gaps in test coverage.

Jump to: Identify Test Coverage Deficiencies »

Satisfy Requirement Traceability Compliance

Automate requirements traceability for industry standards, including ISO 26262, DO-178C, IEC 62304, IEC 61508, EN 50716, and ISO 21434.

Jump to: Satisfy Process Standards Compliance »

Enhance Requirements Analytics & Reporting

Track development progress, make informed decisions, and streamline the SDLC while automating collaboration with ALM and Agile tools.

Jump to: Enhance Requirements Analysis & Reporting »

Embed Quality in the Requirements Management Process

Requirements management and traceability are the heart of robust software development and testing. Both are crucial for ensuring accurate product development, verification, and standards compliance. Parasoft requirements traceability tracks requirements from inception through deployment, maintaining linkage across the SDLC as they evolve.

How It Works

Requirements management and traceability ensure alignment between software development phases by decomposing and linking each requirement into more granular ones, thereby gradually defining the product under development as it advances. However, testing remains essential in validating each requirement thoroughly.

Parasoft’s comprehensive solutions play a pivotal role in this process. With our solutions, teams gain:

Seamless acceptance testing to verify customer requirements.
Robust system testing to ensure adherence to high-quality standards.
Rigorous integration testing for maintaining design integrity.
Precise unit testing to validate individual code functions.

Given the complexity and multitude of requirements and traceability links, automating a requirements traceability matrix (RTM) in testing with Parasoft’s solutions is imperative, especially for safety-critical software where precise traceability documentation is paramount for certifications and audits. Parasoft provides powerful testing capabilities and ensures satisfying stringent quality standards throughout the software development life cycle.

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CASE STUDY

Aerospace/Defense Company Deploys Parasoft to Support DevSecOps for Major DoD Initiative

100%
Achieved requirements traceability.
DO-178 and JSF Rules
Achieved compliance.

Read Case Study

Identify Test Coverage Deficiencies

A requirements traceability matrix (RTM) identifies test coverage deficiencies by mapping each requirement to its corresponding tests. Parasoft solutions support this process. They ensure that every requirement has an associated test case, which helps uncover gaps in the testing process.

How It Works

An RTM illustrates requirements satisfaction by corresponding work items such as decomposed requirements, test cases, source code, and architectural design elements. Displayed as a table, an RTM shows how each requirement is “checked off” by a corresponding part of the product. RTMs can be presented in various formats, including hard copy if necessary.

Parasoft’s DTP builds a comprehensive requirements-to-test cases traceability table, visualizing which requirements are tested and identifying test coverage deficiencies. Unmapped requirements indicate untested areas, posing risks. Parasoft DTP completes the RTM by exporting test cases, test results, and traceability links into the RTM residing in requirements management tools, satisfying safety and security process standards.

A requirement traceability matrix offers the following benefits.

Ensures thorough testing of all requirements.
Accelerates compliance and certification by ensuring complete test coverage.
Eases risk management by addressing coverage gaps early in the SDLC.

By systematically using an RTM along with Parasoft’s test automation solutions, organizations can align testing efforts that lead to reliable, high-quality software products.

Read Blog: Requirements Management and the Traceability Matrix

Satisfy Process Standards Compliance

Compliance with process standards like ISO 26262, DO-178C, and others requires bidirectional traceability between requirements and test cases. This includes, in the strictest cases, linking down to the code that implements the requirement. Parasoft’s solutions help ensure that all safety and security requirements are verifiable, and that the development process is transparent and accountable.

How It Works

Satisfying requirements traceability defined by functional safety and security standards includes adding bidirectional links that trace requirements to evolutionary work artifacts that contribute to its definition, verification, and implementation.

Forward traceability enables quick and easy assessment of what parts of the design, implementation, and test cases need to change if a requirement changes or is removed. Ensuring that all safety and security requirements are consistently met across the development process requires forward traceability.

Backwards traceability informs which requirements are impacted if the design or code is changed. It helps confirm that each element of the design, implementation, and verification can be traced back to a corresponding requirement.

Parasoft DTP manages and automates traceability by integrating with RM/ALM tools like DOORS Next, Jama, Codebeamer, Polarion and others to construct bidirectional links from requirements to test cases, to source code and more. Requirements are then imported into Parasoft solutions like C/C++test where test cases are created and bidirectionally linked to the requirements they verify/validate. The test cases and test results can also be exported through DTP into the RM/ALM tools.

Read Blog: Satisfy Traceability From Jama Requirements to Tests & Code

Enhance Requirements Analysis & Reporting

Our analytics and reporting for software testing provide proper documentation, analysis, and reports to ensure that requirements are well understood, complete, verified, and that evidence for certification or audit purposes exists. These elements are fundamental to safety and security processes.

How It Works

Test reporting is essential for compliance with standards and must provide a clear and comprehensive view of the testing process and results. It demonstrates that all requirements have been tested and issue tracking has been performed. Documentation should clearly display all identified issues and the resolution status.

Parasoft DTP significantly aids teams with requirements reporting, especially in the context of compliance with standards. The centralized platform aggregates data from various testing and RM/ALM tools. This centralization facilitates comprehensive analytics and reporting to ensure that all requirements and associated test cases, results, and issues are easily accessible and traceable.

Teams can leverage DTP’s automated report generation and web dashboard to produce reports and charts that summarize requirements verification based on different aspects of software quality and compliance, including: