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Change is inevitable—especially in business requirements during software development. One can never stop change, but only view it, analyze its impact, and then learn how to cope with it. Unless you get complete visibility of the change items during requirements or build a strong traceability relationship between change records across steps, you cannot drive changes in a positive direction.
The immediate challenge to most development managers is not how to draw traceability relationships between artifacts. Instead, it is how to configure and optimize the relationships in simple mouse clicks that yield maximum return. Configurability; flexibility; and the ability to define relationship types, attributes, and levels play a vital role here.
Fig: Traceability Relationship View
Many project owners fail in these disciplines because of ignorance, lack of proper guidance, and traceabilty limitations. To make the most out of a traceability relationship, you need to set new objectives and relate them to your current capabilities. Here are some guidelines about what to look for when you’re shopping around for vendor products.
Think beyond “Out-of-the-Box” Relationships
One size does not fit all. The business requirements of an organization may contain several different types and complexity levels. You must have the freedom to define relationships between any artifacts across different ALM tools, and without writing any code.
Customization is Key
The creation of new custom entities or artifacts is a continuous process in any development activity. Are you able to create a new relation field for a new entity and establish a relationship with an existing artifact in a few mouse clicks?
Relate Anything, Any Way, and to Any Extent
A big relationship tree can have many branches. Unless you can map each of those connections in all possible cardinalities, getting a complete traceability view is not possible. Ensure that you can relate business requirements to use cases, or vice versa, in any of the given combinations—one to one, one to many, many to one, and many to many.
View and Monitor Impacts Beforehand
Data make decisions. Wouldn’t it be great if you could see impacts both before and after changes occur? This is possible only when you can view and control what particular changes will create an impact. Automated user notifications for such events is a must.
Maintain Attribute Records of Artifacts
Attribute values of a record keep changing from time to time. Are you able to capture or maintain the snapshot value of attributes for artifacts in a relationship?
The bottom line is that if you do not know what you need, you will never get it. List all the flexibilities you require in a traceability relationship and meet your vendor like a pro.
Do you think there’s anything I left out? Please leave a comment.
Change is inevitable in the software world. All one can do is analyze the change and figure out how to cope with its impacts. Developing traceability relationships between various artifacts can be a difficult task. Configurability, flexibility, ability to define relationships and attributes and levels are integral parts of traceability.
Some of the things you must look for while choosing vendor products:
1. Think out of the box – not every requirement is of the same type. They have various types and complexity levels. You must be able to define the relationships between these types across various ALM software, that too without writing any code.
2. Customization – developing new entities and artifacts is an ongoing process in the development cycle. You must be able to create a new relation field for new entities. Also, establish a relationship with the existing artifacts too with a few mouse clicks.
3. Relationship between anything and everything – build a relationship tree between all the requirements and use cases and vice versa. This relationship must be built in every given combination – one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many.
4. Analyze the impacts in advance – analyze the possible impacts of changes in advance this can only be possible if you view and control the impacts of a particular change. Automated user notifications of such events are important too.
5. Maintain attribute records of components – the attribute value in a relationship keeps on changing every now and then. You should be able to maintain the value of attributes for artifacts in any relationship.
You could find more detailed information on our website about Traceability Relationships For Requirement Management Tools.