The
business world today is dependent on the information technology to
meet the ever changing demands of the techno savvy customer and to
withstand the competitive environment. Enterprises look forward to
upgrading of infrastructure along with development of various
software applications. However, the applications thus developed
goes through various phases and includes analysis of requirements,
specification, design, coding & testing, integration and
deployment.
Each
phase in a software
development life cycle has
its own importance with requirement analysis being a critical factor
to the success of a software project . Since requirements form the
basis of software development process, during the stage of
requirement gathering and analysis, the software development team
works together with the stakeholders to understand the various need
levels. However, the complexity of the requirements along the various
stages in the lifecycle of the software project makes it a difficult
situation. Requirement
traceability matrix helps
the development teams out of such difficult situation.
Requirements
traceability is the ability to trace and describe the life of a
requirement, in both a forward and backward direction through its
development and specification, to its actual deployment. A
traceability matrix is then created by associating the requirements
with the work products that satisfy them. It maps relationship
between any two base lined documents such as user requirements and
test cases and is represented in the form of a table with identifier
for each of the items and documents. Higher the value of relationship
total, the more complex is the relationships and needs to be
simplified. Further, various test
management tools are
also used to conduct tests on the products and the requirements on
which based.
Requirements
traceability matrixcan be achieved either by Cross referencing,
creation of specialized templates and integration of documents or by
restructuring to track requirements changes. The matrix thus gives a
complete visual representation of the entity items that are linked to
one another by means of the relationships. Requirements traceability
matrix which is developed at the beginning of a software project
incorporates the project's scope, requirements, and deliverable.
Being
a bidirectional, the requirement traceability matrixtracks both
forward and backward requirement. Forward tracking helps locate the
output of the deliverable while the backward tracking courses the
business requirement for any product features. Analysis
of requirements
traceability is
an important part of the software development lifecycleprocess. The
analysis ensures that all the requirements have been considered
during the development of each phase of the project, with no
loopholes due to missed requirements. The activity also ensures that
all of the requirements are in accordance with each other and support
the goals and objectives of the enterprises.
Other
Links
No comments:
Post a Comment