An Adaptable ORM Metamodel to Support Traceability of Business Requirements across System Development Life Cycle Phases

Enterprises launching IT development projects usually start off with establishing Use Cases or similar techniques to document functional requirements as a special directed effort. More often than not, the resulting information system has buried these and other newly discovered undocumented requirements into program code---losing the important link between business requirements, business rules and developed code. In reality, the business requirements are generally surfaced over several years in memos, e-mails, meeting minutes, consultant reports etc., and the requirements gathering effort starts all over again as a new project to capture these already stated requirements. Using an ORM based development life cycle approach, the supporting adaptable traceability metamodel enables the collection and tagging of the business requirements across a multitude of documents and across development phases, to provide traceability and the facility to develop transforms across an organized information system development effort in meeting with any established System Development Life Cycles.