Requirements Traceability

[Mike531]

Hi,

My project is working towards CMMi 2 certification, and we need to have "bi-directional requirements traceability" to reach it.

Does EA have any options for supporting this?  I've tried linking diagrams (by "adding diagrams as elements reference"), but that's a bit tedious and doesn't work well for coming back from the System-level to the Requirements level (i.e. from a sequence diagram back down, through a Use Case, to a Requirement).

I've also tried the Relationship Matrix, but it doesn't seem to be very well designed for use.

Can anyone provide suggestions for "Best Practices" on this?

[mikewhit]

Join the club :-(

There will be some more positive comments from others, though !

Thomas has done a few things with Automation.

In the meantime, I have made a number of suggestions to Sparx, but unless they're UML (which this stuff isn't) then enhanced functionality in this area is unlikely in the near future.

There's also a case for being able to record Test coverage, both of design/implementation and of Requirements.

[Mike531]

Thanks for the reply... it's good to know I'm not the only one.


The best idea I've found so far has been to use the Relationship matrix and create Realisation links from Use Cases to Requirements.  You can then pull up the Implementation and Dependency Documentation and it allows you to trace both ways... but only from the Use Case to the Requirement, and back.  Also, the information can't be pulled into excel, so it's a bit tedious to use in any form other than actually within EA (which isn't so good for giving the client documentation...)

If only I could get the Sequence Diagrams to function similarly to Elements in terms of relationships (i.e. trace a requirement to a sequence diagram), I'd be a happy camper.  Anybody have ideas on that?

[thomaskilian]

You can export to CSV (right click in the upper area where you can select source/target etc.)
Also you might read here and here