Practical Implications of Traceability

Traceability defined as the ability to trace dependent items within a model and the ability to trace correspondent items in other models is advocated as a desirable property of a software development process. Potential benefits of good traceability are clearer documentation, more focussed development, increased ease of system understanding, and more precise impact analysis of proposed changes. An industry-scale project applying the analysis and design method Objectory has been examined and documented with a number of traceability examples generated from the perspective of a maintainer attempting to understand the system. Four representative examples and a categorization of traceability are presented in this paper in order to provide a concrete empirical basis for the application of traceability to systems development.