Why would you want to trace requirements?
Requirements traceability have a few reasons why it is necessary to be completed during the System Development Life Cycle regardless of what methodology you follow.
Keeping track to of progress of requirements in the Software Development Life Cycle.
As a Business Analyst you are responsible for ensuring requirements are being delivered as requested, it is important to use a requirements management tool which will link your individual requirement to agreed scope items and the subsequent Software Development Life Cycle phases. This way you will always know whether a requirement is on track to be successfully implemented.
When you start having a lot of requirements, it becomes more difficult to manage and track progress of each requirement, and this is when linking a requirement to the other stages in the SDLC becomes really important. The business stakeholders love coming back to the team and they want to know what happened to ìtheirî requirement they wanted.
The other reason for requirement traceability is to manage and trace the changes made to requirements. For example, you will find that as the Software Development Life Cycle rogresses there will be some requirements that change. This could be due to many reasons but often it is the business stakeholders changing their minds and sometimes it is a project decision based on more technical reasons, the bottom line is, you need to keep track of what changes are made to a requirement. You do this via your traceability management tool or a simple requirement management matrix.
A few factors to consider Requirements Traceability approach:
Which tool will you use for Traceability?
Sometimes people simply use a MS Excel Traceability Matrix Template to capture the tracking information. More sophisticated Requirements Management Tools, such as Calibre RM, could be used to manage this too.
Who will be responsible to manage the Requirements Traceability?
It needs a champion and central point. In some projects, you may be long gone (i.e. reassigned to a different project) by the time requirements are being tested and therefore you are not there to update the traceability matrix.You need to consider who can you hand the requirements traceability over too if you are not around for full Software Development Life Cycle.
When do you start the Traceability process?
Depending on your method of capturing the traceability information, this could vary slightly. A general accepted practice is for you to establish your traceability using the signed off business requirements. Any changes post business requirement's sign off will be managed via the traceability (and Change Request) process.
Requirements traceability have a few reasons why it is necessary to be completed during the System Development Life Cycle regardless of what methodology you follow.
Keeping track to of progress of requirements in the Software Development Life Cycle.
As a Business Analyst you are responsible for ensuring requirements are being delivered as requested, it is important to use a requirements management tool which will link your individual requirement to agreed scope items and the subsequent Software Development Life Cycle phases. This way you will always know whether a requirement is on track to be successfully implemented.
When you start having a lot of requirements, it becomes more difficult to manage and track progress of each requirement, and this is when linking a requirement to the other stages in the SDLC becomes really important. The business stakeholders love coming back to the team and they want to know what happened to ìtheirî requirement they wanted.
The other reason for requirement traceability is to manage and trace the changes made to requirements. For example, you will find that as the Software Development Life Cycle rogresses there will be some requirements that change. This could be due to many reasons but often it is the business stakeholders changing their minds and sometimes it is a project decision based on more technical reasons, the bottom line is, you need to keep track of what changes are made to a requirement. You do this via your traceability management tool or a simple requirement management matrix.
A few factors to consider Requirements Traceability approach:
Which tool will you use for Traceability?
Sometimes people simply use a MS Excel Traceability Matrix Template to capture the tracking information. More sophisticated Requirements Management Tools, such as Calibre RM, could be used to manage this too.
Who will be responsible to manage the Requirements Traceability?
It needs a champion and central point. In some projects, you may be long gone (i.e. reassigned to a different project) by the time requirements are being tested and therefore you are not there to update the traceability matrix.You need to consider who can you hand the requirements traceability over too if you are not around for full Software Development Life Cycle.
When do you start the Traceability process?
Depending on your method of capturing the traceability information, this could vary slightly. A general accepted practice is for you to establish your traceability using the signed off business requirements. Any changes post business requirement's sign off will be managed via the traceability (and Change Request) process.
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