Interactive Traceability Querying and Visualization for Coping With Development Complexity

TL;DR

This paper advocates for an integrated, interactive approach to requirements traceability that combines querying and visualization to help practitioners effectively utilize traceability information amidst increasing development complexity.

Contribution

It proposes a novel, integrated method for interactive traceability querying and visualization to improve practical usage of traceability data.

Findings

Practitioners rarely use traceability info after creation

Interactive, context-specific tools can enhance traceability utility

Position paper emphasizing need for integrated solutions

Abstract

Requirements traceability can in principle support stakeholders coping with rising development complexity. However, studies showed that practitioners rarely use available traceability information after its initial creation. In the position paper for the Dagstuhl seminar 1242, we argued that a more integrated approach allowing interactive traceability queries and context-specific traceability visualizations is needed to let practitioner access and use valuable traceability information. The information retrieved via traceability can be very specific to a current task of a stakeholder, abstracting from everything that is not required to solve the task.