What is Traceability matrix?

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Where it is used practically and whether it is necessary in development activities or testing activities?
What is the structure or Architecture of Traceability matrix?

Ans:

"In a software development life cycle, requirements are translated into specifications based on which code is developed. Once the construction process is complete, the product is put through various stages of testing before it finally goes live.

Requirement: A requirement describes a condition or capability to which a system must conform; either derived directly from user needs, or stated in a contract, standard, specification, or other formally imposed document.

Specification: A declarative description of what something is or does.

Traceability is the common thread that ensures that the verification and validation of the product is complete. Requirements tracing is the process of documenting the links between the user requirements for the system you're building and the work products developed to implement and verify those requirements. These work products include software requirements, design specifications, software code, test plans and other artifacts of the systems development process. Requirements tracing helps the project team to understand which parts of the design and code implement the user's requirements, and which tests are necessary to verify that the user's requirements have been implemented correctly. Table 1 illustrates the concept of a trace matrix.

Table1

Requirement

Functional Specification

Design Specification

Code section

Test Condition

Defect ID

1

1.1

3.1

Line 300-350

12

13

14

D2

-

D6


1.2

3.2

Line 450-600

21

22

23

-

-

-

Table1: assumes that the trace matrix includes development activities as well. However, this is not always possible as data may not be readily available. In the above example, Requirement Number 1 has resulted in two defects (D2 and D6). These can be traced back to Conditions 12 and 14 respectively. By drilling down further, it is possible to identify the impacted specifications and the relevant code section. Where the trace excludes construction activity, the trace matrix should include other elements of the test suite as given in Table 2.

Table2 :

Requirement

Functional Specification

Test Condition

Test Case

Test Script

Defect ID

1

1.1

12

13

14

12.1/12.2

13.1/13.2/13.3

14.1

T5

T6

T6

D2

-

D6


1.2

21

22

23

21.1

22.1/22.2

23.1/23.2/23.3

T8

T8

T8

-

-

-

Table 2: drills further into the actual test case that failed. This gives additional information to the developer to be able to zoom into the cause of the defect as well as assist the users in assigning a severity classification to the defect. For example, the defect may not relate to a critical functionality or the user could be trained to avoid the defect. These decisions become imperative when the time to fix is high and the go-live date is non negotiable.

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What is Traceability matrix?
Where it is used practically and whether it is necessary in development activities or testing activities?
What is the structure or Architecture of Traceability matrix?

Traceability Matrix is a document used for mapping the Test Cases with
Requirements.
It's used for identifying the Requirements Coverage....i.e. whether the test cases written are sufficient for the particular requirement or not.






Sr. No.

Functionality

Delivery

Rel 1.0

Rel 1.1

Rel 1.2







Features for a module defined by developers submitted for QA review release helps tester to trace the functionality in build.

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TM is a very important document of the SDLC. It helps you in managing the traceability of your requirements starting from SRS, HLD, DDD, Test Cases.

From this single document you can came to know whether requirement are correctly mapped or not in various artifacts developed in various phased of the SLDC.

It basically contains the references of the section for e.g. If Home Page is in Section 1 then same needs to be mapped in HLD, DDD, and respective test cases....

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