End-to-End Requirement Traceability through Contribution Structures and Requirements Traceability Matrices

Requirements traceability is the ability to follow the life of a requirement i.e. from its origin, to its refinement and inclusion in the requirement specification document, and from there to its subsequent deployment in coding, testing and validation. Pre-Requirement Traceability is concerned with requirement’s life before its inclusion in the requirement specification, while Post-Requirement Traceability is concerned with the requirement’s life after its inclusion in the requirement specification. Pre-Requirement Traceability is typically not covered by existing tools because it is difficult to trace the origin of requirements to the individuals who initiate, authenticate and document the user re-quirements. This research indicates that the performance of these tools can be significantly improved by including Pre-Requirement Traceability in their traceability frameworks. Contribution struc