A development of a tool to improve traceability between requirement and verification

In the development of a product or system it is important to know that all the requirements are verified and validated in order to maintain a good reputation and standard. Today ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems AB does not have a clear traceability between requirements and verification. In order to improve and create a clear formal traceability for their developing process a traceability examination has to be made. Regarding both how their process is planned and executed, but also how different changes could improve the current situation. How these changes would change the process, both positively and negatively is also discussed. To get a clearer understanding of their developing process and what developing model they use and how well it actually fits their developing processes, a study and research is conducted. This study results in a recommendation to either continue to use the one they use today, the V-model or to change to either the Agile model or the Waterfall model. This recommendation will be based on the evaluation of three very different developing models. A benchmark and comparison was also carried out on how other companies in other industries work to maintain and improve traceability, all to get a broader understanding of the verification processes and ways of improving traceability. ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems AB’s developing models, verification tools, documentation tools, ordering tools, developing methods, testing and verification processes where analyzed through ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems AB’s intranet and through interviews of employees. The employees were from different departments and had different roles, but in this master thesis the focus were mainly on project leaders. Some computer programs were also investigated first hand, but there were limitations in this process due to security reasons and limited access. This investigation made it possible to develop a new traceability tool. The result of this master thesis was both a theoretical result and the planning tool, Trace which created a clear traceability between the requirements and the different verification events. In Trace a requirement can be followed from the start to the end in the verification process, and give the user the answer on if the requirement is completely verified or in what stage in the process it failed a verification test. The program clearly shows the users were the requirement/requirements will be tested, which requirements that are tested at a certain test, if it is finished and if not where it failed, and more information needed to get a good traceability during the whole project. In Trace there is also the possibility to make a verification matrix which contains all of the requirements within a system on one side and all its properties that should be searchable on the other, it will make all the information available and easy to follow at the same place. The conclusion of the benchmarking and comparison was that ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems AB and most of the other companies interviewed lacked a complete traceability between requirements and verification. These companies are all looking for ways to improve traceability and have mapped out to different extent were traceability is missing. A reason to why they have this mutual problem is that the knowledge and development of technology today is different from 10 years ago. In today’s society companies are expected to have a faster production than before, this leads to changes in the developing methods which changes their developing models. And here the traceability got lost in the change