Survey Protocol: Traceability during Development of Systems with Safety and Security Implications- Importance, Tools, and Challenges

Abstract. [Context and motivation] Although traceability plays an im-portant role in system development projects, it is often neglected or poorly per-formed. Stakeholders involved in system development projects have different use of traces, and therefore the required traceability and its implementation de-pends upon the stakeholders involved in the projects. [Problem/question] Tra-ditional ways of implementing traceability using traceability matrices or office tools such Excel sheets are not effective, especially while developing large and complex systems. There exists several requirements management tools, but they have to be extended or tailored to achieve the traceability needed of the stake-holders, requiring human effort and resources. Little is known or has been re-ported on traceability usage, practises and challenges in the development of sys-tems with safety and security implications. Such a knowledge and understand-ing is needed to develop cost-effective traceability solutions as well as to high-light the importance of traceability [Principal ideas] This paper presents a pro-posal for performing a survey – online questionnaire – with the participants of REFSQ’14 to collect and report their experiences on traceability. [Contribu-tion] Since, REFSQ’14 participants have a diverse background, i.e. experiences with different roles and responsibilities in projects from industry, the survey will be a unique opportunity to collect and report data on traceability covering several stakeholder viewpoints.