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TracIMo: a traceability introduction methodology and its evaluation in an Agile development team

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Abstract

Software traceability, the ability to relate software development artifacts such as requirements, design models and code to each other, is an important aspect in software development. It yields a number of benefits such as facilitating impact analysis and tracking software changes. However, for companies to reap these benefits, a proper traceability strategy—a plan for how traceability should be managed—needs to be defined and implemented. Existing literature lacks concrete guidelines for practitioners to systematically define such a strategy. In this study, we address this gap by defining a Traceability Introduction Methodology (TracIMo), which is a methodology for systematically designing, implementing and evaluating software traceability in practice. We used design science research to design TracIMo and evaluated it in a case study with an agile development team of a company in the finance domain. Our results show that TracIMo is feasible as it allows incremental definition and evaluation of a traceability strategy that is aligned with the company’s traceability goals and the existing development process. We also report practical challenges encountered when designing a traceability strategy such as defining the right level of granularity and the need for defining intermediate development artifacts.

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Notes

  1. https://www.omg.org/spec/SPEM/About-SPEM/.

  2. https://www.omg.org/spec/Essence/About-Essence/.

  3. http://www.eclipse.org.

  4. https://www.eclipse.org/papyrus/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

    Salome Maro

  2. Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Jan-Philipp Steghöfer

  3. Knab, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Paolo Bozzelli

  4. University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy

    Henry Muccini

  5. Chalmers, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Jan-Philipp Steghöfer

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  1. Salome Maro
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  2. Jan-Philipp Steghöfer
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  4. Henry Muccini
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Correspondence to Salome Maro.

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Maro, S., Steghöfer, JP., Bozzelli, P. et al. TracIMo: a traceability introduction methodology and its evaluation in an Agile development team. Requirements Eng 27, 53–81 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-021-00361-5

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