Taxonomic Trace Links - Rethinking Traceability and its Benefits

• Background: Traceability is an important quality of artifacts that are used in knowledge-intensive tasks. When projectbudgets and time pressure are a reality, this leads often to a down-prioritization of creating trace links. Objective:We propose a new idea that uses knowledge organization structures, such as taxonomies, ontologies and thesauri, asan auxiliary artifact to establish trace links. In order to investigate the novelty and feasibility of this idea, we studytraceability in the area of requirements engineering. Method: First, we conduct a literature survey to investigate towhat extent and how auxiliary artifacts have been used in the past for requirements traceability. Then, we conduct avalidation study in industry, testing the idea of taxonomic trace links with realistic artifacts. Results: We have reviewed126 studies that investigate requirements traceability; ninetey-one of them use auxiliary artifacts in the traceabilityprocess. In the validation study, while we have encountered six challenges when classifying requirements with a domain-specific taxonomy, we found that designers and engineers are able to classify design objects comprehensively and reliably.Conclusions: The idea of taxonomic trace links is novel and feasible in practice. However, the identified challenges needto be addressed to allow for an adoption in practice and enable a transfer to software intensive contexts.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Programvaruteknik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Software Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

equirements traceability

Taxonomy

Trace link

Classification

Building information modeling

Programvaruteknik

Software Engineering

Systemteknik

Systems Engineering

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)