Requirements Tracing

A requirement is defined as the description of a condition or capability of a system.
Each requirement must be logical and testable. To ensure that all requirements have been
implemented and tested, they must be traceable. Each requirement must be mapped to a
test cases and test steps and defects.
Mercury Interactive’s Test Director does a good job of mapping the entire history and then
updating the status of the requirement as a defect is detected, re-tested or corrected. Other
tools like DOORS, or Caliber and IBM’s Rational Requisite Pro can also be used to log, track
and map requirements.
Example
If a project team is developing an object-oriented Internet application, the requirements or
stakeholder needs will be traced to use cases, activity diagrams, class diagrams and test
cases or scenarios in the analysis stage of the project. Reviews for these deliverables will
include a check of the traceability to ensure that all requirements are accounted for.
In the design stage of the project, the tracing will continue to design and test models. Again,
reviews for these deliverables will include a check for traceability to ensure that nothing has
been lost in the translation of analysis deliverables. Requirements mapping to system
components drives the test partitioning strategies. Test strategies evolve along with system
mapping. Test cases to be developed need to know where each part of a business rule is
mapped in the application architecture. For example, a business rule regarding a customer
phone number may be implemented on the client side as a GUI field edit for high
performance order entry. In another it may be implemented as a stored procedure on the
data server so the rule can be enforced across applications.
When the system is implemented, test cases or scenarios will be executed to prove that the
requirements were implemented in the application. Tools can be used throughout the project
to help manage requirements and track the implementation status of each one.