Defining Correctly Requirements Traceability

The Business Analyst must have the ability to follow the life of requirements and designs at different levels and to manage the effects of changes on them.

Originally published on medium.com

Commonly, a requirement obtained in Elicitation stage can follow different paths (planned or unplanned) in the following project phases. In Business Analysis it´s unavoidable to define traceability links between requirements and whereby to view the associations and dependencies that exist between the requirements.

The “Requirements Life Cycle Management” knowledge area from BABOK® Guide version 3, describes the task “Trace Requirements” that intends “analyzes and maintains the relationships between requirements, designs, solution components, and other work products for impact analysis, coverage, and allocation.” It permits a fast and simple impact analysis, a reliable discovery of inconsistencies and gaps, a better understanding of the scope & change, and more reliable assessment of requirements.

Defining the requirements traceability

First of all, the Business Analyst needs to decide what will be the level of formality when tracing requirements for appropriately for business analysis communication. Considering the value that each connection (requirement-solution) is supposed to deliver. Having in mind that it’s important to have enough formality to assure that the stakeholders will review, understand, and approve them.

Secondly, the Business Analyst needs to consider the types of relationships in the traceability approach: 

• Derive: when a requirement is derived from another requirement.

• Depends: when a requirement depends on another requirement.

• Satisfy: when an implementation element satisfies a requirement.

• Validate: when a test case or other element fulfils a requirement.

And finally, the Business Analyst should maintain a traceability repository, where the requirements traceability is documented and kept in accordance with the business analysis approach.

Techniques as Business Rules Analysis, Functional Decomposition, Process Modelling and Scope Modelling are very useful to trace requirements. The Business Analyst must use these as support.

The requirement traceability will be right done when within a solution scope, it´s clearly defined relationships to other requirements, solution, releases, phases, iterations. It must cover all changes and permits to identify easily its related impacts.