Supporting Software Understanding with Automated Requirements Traceability

Egyed, Alexander; GrÃ¼nbacher, Paul

doi:10.1142/S0218194005002464

Supporting Software Understanding with Automated Requirements Traceability

by Alexander Egyed, Paul GrÃ¼nbacher

Abstract:

Requirements traceability (RT) aims at defining and utilizing relationships between stakeholder requirements and artifacts produced during the software development life-cycle and provides an important means to foster software understanding. Although techniques for generating and validating traceability information are available, RT in practice often suffers from the enormous effort and complexity of creating and maintaining traces. This results in invalid or incomplete trace information which cannot support engineers in real-world problems. In this paper we present a tool-supported approach that requires the designer to specify some trace dependencies but eases trace acquisition by generating others automatically. We illustrate the approach using a video-on-demand system and show how the generated traces can be used in various engineering scenarios to improve software understanding. In a case study using an open source software application we demonstrate that the approach is capable of dealing with large-scale systems and delivers valid results.

Reference:

Alexander Egyed, Paul GrÃ¼nbacher, "Supporting Software Understanding with Automated Requirements Traceability", In Int'l Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 783-810, 2005.

Bibtex Entry:

@Article{dblp:journals/ijseke/EgyedG05,
  Title                    = {Supporting Software Understanding with Automated Requirements Traceability},
  Author                   = {Alexander Egyed and Paul GrÃ¼nbacher},
  Journal                  = {Int'l Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering},
  Year                     = {2005},
  Number                   = {5},
  Pages                    = {783-810},
  Volume                   = {15},

  Abstract                 = {Requirements traceability (RT) aims at defining and utilizing relationships between stakeholder requirements and artifacts produced during the software development life-cycle and provides an important means to foster software understanding. Although techniques for generating and validating traceability information are available, RT in practice often suffers from the enormous effort and complexity of creating and maintaining traces. This results in invalid or incomplete trace information which cannot support engineers in real-world problems. In this paper we present a tool-supported approach that requires the designer to specify some trace dependencies but eases trace acquisition by generating others automatically. We illustrate the approach using a video-on-demand system and show how the generated traces can be used in various engineering scenarios to improve software understanding. In a case study using an open source software application we demonstrate that the approach is capable of dealing with large-scale systems and delivers valid results.},
  Doi                      = {10.1142/S0218194005002464},
  File                     = {Supporting Software Understanding with Automated Requirements Traceability:Journals\\JSEKE 2005 - Supporting Software Understanding with Automated Requirements Traceability\\Supporting Software Understanding with Automated Requirements Traceability.pdf:PDF},
  Keywords                 = {traceability},
  Owner                    = {paul},
  Timestamp                = {2015.09.12}
}