Create Traceability Diagrams

Having structured the models of a project to indicate directions and theoretical relationships between the models and packages, you can formalize these directions on a Traceability diagram, using Realize, Trace and similar relationships.

You initially create a Traceability diagram as a Custom diagram, but if you are creating the diagram manually you can use elements and relationships from other Toolbox pages to develop the diagram as broadly as is necessary.

You can also generate the diagram using the Add | Related Elements context menu option to automatically bring in elements linked to the selected element. It is probably better to add the elements in stages, one level at a time, but you could add several levels in one go to see how far the hierarchy extends and to identify relationship and element types to exclude from the 'clean' diagram. You could perform a similar operation, one element at a time, using the Relationships window.

The above diagram instantly shows how two levels of Requirements are realized by Use Cases, and which Requirement is realized by which Use Case(s). It also shows how some of the Use Cases are implemented by Class elements. Further, you can drill down on the Use Cases (or, in other Traceability diagrams, any other composite elements) to display more detailed diagrams showing how the Use Case meets the Requirement. The Close Account Use Case, for example, contains a Communication diagram and a Sequence diagram.

You can tailor your Traceability diagrams to depict any level of granularity and any stages of development that are appropriate. You might narrow the above diagram, for example, to show development from just the Remove User Requirement, and extend it to include Interfaces, Components, Test Case elements or any other facet of the system or process.

Whilst the Traceability diagram itself provides information on the definition, design and implementation of a business process feature, much more information can be obtained using tools such as the Relationships Matrix and relationships Traceability window.