Effective Test Reporting - Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM)

Hello Friends,

Requirement traceability matrix (RTM) is very important report when it comes to the tracking of testing activities and get them linked, this report can be tailored as per the needs, thus need not to be in specific format, before preparing this report you might choose to have following considerations

• Target Audience
• Development methodology
• Tool or Excel
• Intended Complexity

Many times we heard about this term and keep aside by understanding this as additional burden, but in reality this is one tool which helps you in

• Connectivity Platform of all the different entities
• Tracking the test execution
• Getting the test coverage
• Making the Go, No Go decision

Some might be wondering I am following agile and how I need to get this in place?, answer is simple, fundamentally your building blocks of testing are same, and you just need to update it as per your sprint

Something which would look like this

As per the end user of RTM it can be modified, like if you would like to have it for the test engineers, then probably you would like to add the defect status, execution date, and only user specific tasks, you may choose to remove even user stories and requirements, But if you are preparing it for management, then the details like defect status or execution date need not to be specified, instead you can have the colour codes, and overall status based on the testing progress.

For implementing this report in your project, you may go ahead and;

• Understand the source of requirement (BRD, SRS, Emails, etc.)

Depending upon your requirement source you many choose to track then, for example if you are getting the SRS then the requirement source would be use case number, if it is BRD then requirement source would be Requirement ID, if it is in Product backlog then it would be User story

• Choose the tool like VSTS or Excel to develop the RTM

These days many tools have this feature and you can choose to have either tool like VSTS which provides you the linking and updates the report automatically or have Excel and take charge of updating it after every execution cycle.

• Prepare the base template as per your intended need

Point I would like to make here is don’t unnecessarily complicate the template, as suggested above understand the need of RTM and accordingly nail down the fields to be tracked and just prepare the base template which can followed easily.

•  Start filling the information.

As per my experience we start enthusiastically but down the line this goes in backyards, thus keeping momentum and marking this as compulsory activity and not the optional one would help in keeping the pace.

Believe me this is really not that hard to have RTM, in contrary it serves as single solution for many questions.

So start implementing!

 Yogesh.