The Benefit of Requirements Traceability When Evolving a Software Product: A Controlled Experiment (bibtex)
by Patrick Mäder, Alexander Egyed
Abstract:
Software traceability is a required component of many software development processes. Advocates of requirements traceability cite advantages like easier program comprehension and support for software maintenance (i.e., software change). However, despite its growing popularity, there exists no published evaluation about the usefulness of requirements traceability. It is important, if not crucial, to investigate whether the use of requirements traceability can significantly support development tasks to eventually justify its costs. We thus conducted a controlled experiment with 71 subjects re-performing real maintenance tasks on two third-party development projects: half of the tasks with and the other half without traceability. Subjects sketched their task solutions on paper to focus on the their ability to solving the problems rather than their programming skills. Our findings show that subjects with traceability performed on average 24% faster on a given task and created on average 50% more correct solutions suggesting that traceability not only saves effort but can profoundly improve software maintenance quality.
Reference:
The Benefit of Requirements Traceability When Evolving a Software Product: A Controlled Experiment (Patrick Mäder, Alexander Egyed), In Proceedings of Fachtagung Software Engineering und Software Management (SE), Wien, Österreich, 2016.
Bibtex Entry:
@Conference{Maeder2016,
  author    = {Patrick Mäder and Alexander Egyed},
  title     = {The Benefit of Requirements Traceability When Evolving a Software Product: A Controlled Experiment},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of Fachtagung Software Engineering und Software Management (SE), Wien, Österreich},
  year      = {2016},
  pages     = {109--110},
  abstract  = {Software traceability is a required component of many software development
	processes. Advocates of requirements traceability cite advantages
	like easier program comprehension and support for software maintenance
	(i.e., software change). However, despite its growing popularity,
	there exists no published evaluation about the usefulness of requirements
	traceability. It is important, if not crucial, to investigate whether
	the use of requirements traceability can significantly support development
	tasks to eventually justify its costs. We thus conducted a controlled
	experiment with 71 subjects re-performing real maintenance tasks
	on two third-party development projects: half of the tasks with and
	the other half without traceability. Subjects sketched their task
	solutions on paper to focus on the their ability to solving the problems
	rather than their programming skills. Our findings show that subjects
	with traceability performed on average 24% faster on a given task
	and created on average 50% more correct solutions suggesting that
	traceability not only saves effort but can profoundly improve software
	maintenance quality.},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, http://dblp.org},
  biburl    = {http://dblp.uni-trier.de/rec/bib/conf/se/MaderE16},
  crossref  = {DBLP:conf/se/2016},
  file      = {:Conferences\\SE 2016 - The Benefit of Requirements Traceability When Evolving a Software Product\\The Benefit of Requirements Traceability When Evolving a Software Product-preprint.pdf:PDF},
  keywords  = {FWF P25289},
  timestamp = {Thu, 10 Mar 2016 14:37:54 +0100},
  url       = {http://subs.emis.de/LNI/Proceedings/Proceedings252/article41.html},
}
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