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Acquiring Tool Support for Traceability

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Book cover Software and Systems Traceability

Abstract

“Which traceability tool?” is a question that many organisations can spend time and resources considering. It has long been a perception that a tool, once acquired and installed on a project, can address all of its traceability-related needs. However, the purchase or development of a tool to support traceability can be a costly decision. Not only can the tool become shelf-ware, organisations can get burdened with expensive support contracts, disproportionate effort can get misdirected towards learning to use the tool and configuring it to address particular needs, and inappropriate use can lead to erroneous decisions. Acquiring a tool to support traceability is no trivial matter and it needs to be undertaken as part of a broader process improvement initiative. This chapter presents a seven-step guide for the practitioner to make decisions about tools to support their particular traceability needs from within the wider context of a new or improved requirements management system.

The material in this chapter was the basis for a mini-tutorial presented by the authors at RE’09 (Gotel and Mäder, 2009).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. New York, NY, 10014, USA

    Orlena Gotel

  2. Institute for Systems Engineering and Automation (SEA), Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria

    Patrick Mäder

Authors
  1. Orlena Gotel
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  2. Patrick Mäder
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Correspondence to Orlena Gotel .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , School of Computing, DePaul University, 1 East Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, 60604, USA

    Jane Cleland-Huang

  2. 720 Greenwich Street, New York, 10014, USA

    Orlena Gotel

  3. , School of Informatics, City University, London, EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom

    Andrea Zisman

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag London Limited

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Gotel, O., Mäder, P. (2012). Acquiring Tool Support for Traceability. 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_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2239-5_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-2238-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-2239-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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