Tracing Requirements

Requirements are at the core of all project deliverables. Ensuring that all project requirements are achieved by the project can be difficult to validate if no further means of tracing requirements is employed. Requirements traceability hence is a critical component of any project, as it provides the ability for a project to articulate how any given requirement has been met by the project deliverable. A great deal of research has been undertaken in this field, as requirements traceability although provides a very powerful and useful deliverable, is perceived as a very time consuming, cumbersome and labour intensive task. Due to this perception its popularity and usefulness can be compromised when short cuts are performed to minimise the time and effort that is devoted to documenting the traceability of the project requirements. This paper will look at the current state of play of requirements traceability. Keywords—requirements, traceability, techniques, challenges