Problem-Aware Traceability in Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering

Requirements traceability helps to ensure that a requirements specification is aligned with the intended stakeholders’ needs. Such alignment should involve the consideration of why such needs arise, in terms of what problems the stakeholders are faced with, and what kinds of software system may help alleviate or eliminate the problems. However, little work can be found on requirements traceability that explicitly considers the problems. In this paper, we propose an problem-aware framework for establishing requirements traceability, in the context of goal-oriented requirements engineering, which explicitly models problems and their root causes, together with other important ontological concepts, stakeholders’ goals, and both functional and non-functional requirements as a solution, and issues. In this framework, ontological concepts are partitioned into layers, reflecting which traceability links are classified into intraand inter-traceabilities leading to several kinds of links. Additionally, undesirable consequences of inappropriate traceabilities are also categorized. A case study shows some key benefits of the framework.