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Towards a Multidimensional View on Traceability in IT

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Advances in Enterprise Engineering XVII (EDEWC 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 510))

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Abstract

Traceability is a central concept in the domain of Enterprise Engineering. Indeed, the controlled transformation of the more business-oriented requirements layers to designs and runtime code has been studied over the years in domains such as IT Governance, Enterprise Architecture, and Software Development. However, traceability on the entire flow from business to IT is often lacking in complex projects in industry, thereby hampering the agility, productivity, and resilience of organizations in the digital era. Consequentially, organizations often fail to realize IT business value. Therefore, we investigate how the traceability issue in IT can be defined, and to what extent traceability issues still exist in practice based on 28 interviews with 16 interviewees from various organizations, differing in industry, size, and geographical location. Results indicate that opinions on the value and importance of traceability vary greatly, along with the views on how realistic it is to establish traceability in practice. Also, available theories and frameworks do not seem to be applied in many cases, even though they are not completely unknown to the interviewees. Clearly, there is a gap between theory and practice regarding traceability. The reasons for this are not entirely clear from this research. However, we call for new, holistic, and integrated research on traceability across multiple domains, highlighting the multidimensionality of the traceability issue in IT, and fostered in the Enterprise Engineering community.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    Anna De Vos & Jan Verelst

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  1. Anna De Vos
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  2. Jan Verelst
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Correspondence to Anna De Vos .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Monika Malinova Mandelburger

  2. University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Sérgio Guerreiro

  3. Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

    Cristine Griffo

  4. University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal

    David Aveiro

  5. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Henderik A. Proper

  6. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Marianne Schnellmann

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De Vos, A., Verelst, J. (2024). Towards a Multidimensional View on Traceability in IT. In: Malinova Mandelburger, M., Guerreiro, S., Griffo, C., Aveiro, D., Proper, H.A., Schnellmann, M. (eds) Advances in Enterprise Engineering XVII. EDEWC 2023. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 510. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58935-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58935-5_7

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