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Traceability in Agile Projects

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Software and Systems Traceability

Abstract

Agile methods are becoming an increasingly mainstream approach to software development. They are characterized by short iterations with frequent deliverables, test-driven development, lightweight documentation, and frequent interactions with the customer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, traceability is often seen as unnecessary and therefore unwanted in agile projects. This is due to the perceived overhead of creating and maintaining traceability links and the assumption that agile developers have sufficient understanding of a project to implement a change without the support of previously defined traceability links. This chapter explores the challenges, benefits, techniques, and processes of tracing across a broad spectrum of agile projects.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Agile Manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org

  2. 2.

    Agile Project Management Forum hosted on Yahoo – Discussion thread “Agile Traceability”

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Correspondence to Jane Cleland-Huang .

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Cleland-Huang, J. (2012). Traceability in Agile Projects. In: Cleland-Huang, J., Gotel, O., Zisman, A. (eds) Software and Systems Traceability. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2239-5_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2239-5_12

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