A survey on tracing approaches in practice and research

Requirements traceability is an important feature of software systems. It is used to keep track of the relationships between individual requirements, of the change history and of the relationships to other software process artefacts, such as test cases or design components. In the literature, various tracing approaches are mentioned that deal with different kinds of documentation entities and relationships to be traced. But, so far, there is no encompassing and systematic view on tracing approaches in practice and research. This report provides a traceability taxonomy of the main concepts that affect traceability. Existing tracing approaches in practice and research are integrated into this taxonomy. In addition, the report identifies weaknesses of existing approaches and points out further research directions in the area of traceability