Traceability is about understanding how high-level requirements - objectives, goals, aims, aspirations, expectations,
needs - are transformed into low-level requirements, how they are implemented, and how they are verified.
Using traceability can provide the following benefits [HUL05]:
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Greater Confidence in meeting objectives
Establishing traceability engenders greater reflection on how objectives are satisfied. Traceability permits
coverage analysis to ensure that everything we agreed to do has been done (completeness), and only what we agreed
to do has been done (no gold platting).
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Ability to assess the impact of change
Traceability permits various forms of impact analysis that can be used to assess the cost, schedule and technical
impact of a proposed change.
Traceability provides greater clarity of how work contributes to the whole.
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Ability to track progress
It is notoriously difficult to measure progress when all that you are doing is creating and revising
artifacts. Processes surrounding traceability allow precise measures of progress (is there a design artifact
for each requirement?, Is there a test case for each requirement?).
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Ability to balance cost against benefit
Relating product components to the requirements allows benefit to be assessed against cost.
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