Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

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

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Requirements Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

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/.

References

  1. Amalfitano D, De Simone V, Maietta RR, Scala S, Fasolino AR (2019) Using tool integration for improving traceability management testing processes: an automotive industrial experience. J Softw Evol Process 31(6):e2171

  2. Maro S, Steghöfer J-P, Bozzelli P, Muccini H (2021) Supplemental information for “TracIMo: a traceability introduction methodology and its evaluation in an Agile development team”. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4160568

  3. Arkley P, Riddle S, Brookes T (2006) Tailoring traceability information to business needs. In: 2006 14th IEEE international requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 239–244

  4. Asuncion HU, François F, Taylor RN (2007) An end-to-end industrial software traceability tool. In: Proceedings of the the 6th joint meeting of the European software engineering conference and the ACM SIGSOFT symposium on The foundations of software engineering. ACM, pp 115–124

  5. Asuncion HU, Asuncion AU, Taylor RN (2010) Software traceability with topic modeling. In: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE international conference on software engineering, vol. 1. ACM, pp 95–104

  6. Biehl JT, Czerwinski M, Czerwinski M, Smith G, Robertson GG (2007) Fastdash: a visual dashboard for fostering awareness in software teams. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, pp 1313–1322

  7. Borg M, Runeson P, Ardö A (2014) Recovering from a decade: a systematic mapping of information retrieval approaches to software traceability. Emp Softw Eng 19(6):1565–1616

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Bouillon E, Mäder P, Philippow I (2013) A survey on usage scenarios for requirements traceability in practice. In: International working conference on requirements engineering: foundation for software quality. Springer, pp 158–173

  9. Cleland-Huang J, Hayes JH, Domel JM (2009) Model-based traceability. In: 2009 ICSE workshop on traceability in emerging forms of software engineering. IEEE, pp 6–10

  10. Cleland-Huang J, Czauderna A, Gibiec M, Emenecker J (2010) A machine learning approach for tracing regulatory codes to product specific requirements. In: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE international conference on software engineering. ACM, pp 155–164

  11. Cleland-Huang J, Gotel OC, Huffman Hayes J, Mäder P, Zisman A (2014) Software traceability: trends and future directions. In: Future of software engineering proceedings, pp 55–69

  12. COEST (2015) Center of excellence for software traceability (coest). http://www.coest.org. Accessed 15 Oct 2017

  13. Cruzes DS, Dyba T (2011) Recommended steps for thematic synthesis in software engineering. In: 2011 International symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement. IEEE, pp 275–284

  14. De Lucia A, Fasano F, Oliveto R (2008) Traceability management for impact analysis. In: Frontiers of software maintenance, 2008. FoSM 2008. IEEE, pp 21–30

  15. Dömges R, Pohl K (1998) Adapting traceability environments to project-specific needs. Commun ACM 41(12):54–62

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Dybå T (2005) An empirical investigation of the key factors for success in software process improvement. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 31(5):410–424

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Engelsman W, Wieringa RJ, van Sinderen M, Gordijn J, Haaker T (2019) Realizing traceability from the business model to enterprise architecture. In: International conference on conceptual modeling. Springer, pp 37–46

  18. Espinoza A, Garbajosa J (2011) A study to support agile methods more effectively through traceability. Innov Syst Softw Eng 7(1):53–69

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Florez JM (2019) Automated fine-grained requirements-to-code traceability link recovery. In: 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st international conference on software engineering: companion proceedings (ICSE-Companion). IEEE, pp 222–225

  20. Gotel O, Mäder P (2012) Acquiring tool support for traceability. In: Software and systems traceability. Springer, pp 43–68

  21. Gotel O, Cleland-Huang J, Hayes JH, Zisman A, Egyed A, Grünbacher P, Antoniol G (2012a) The quest for ubiquity: A roadmap for software and systems traceability research. In: 2012 20th IEEE international requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 71–80

  22. Gotel O, Cleland-Huang J, Hayes JH, Zisman A, Egyed A, Grünbacher P, Dekhtyar A, Antoniol G, Maletic J (2012b) The grand challenge of traceability (v1. 0). In: Software and systems traceability. Springer, pp 343–409

  23. Gotel O, Cleland-Huang J, Hayes JH, Zisman A, Egyed A, Grünbacher P, Dekhtyar A, Antoniol G, Maletic J, Mäder P (2012c) Traceability fundamentals. In: Software and systems traceability. Springer, pp 3–22

  24. Gotel OC, Finkelstein C (1994) An analysis of the requirements traceability problem. In: 1994., Proceedings of the first international conference on requirements engineering (RE). IEEE, pp 94–101

  25. Guo J, Cheng J, Cleland-Huang J (2017) Semantically enhanced software traceability using deep learning techniques. In: Proceedings of the 39th international conference on software engineering. IEEE Press, pp 3–14

  26. Hayes JH, Dekhtyar A, Osborne J (2003) Improving requirements tracing via information retrieval. In: 2003 11th IEEE international requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 138–147

  27. Ingram C, Riddle S (2012) Cost-benefits of traceability. In: Software and systems traceability. Springer, pp 23–42

  28. Itemis (2019) Yakindu traceability. https://www.itemis.com/en/yakindu/traceability/. Accessed 07 Aug 2019

  29. Javed MA, Zdun U (2014) A systematic literature review of traceability approaches between software architecture and source code. In: Proceedings of the 18th international conference on evaluation and assessment in software engineering. ACM, p 16

  30. Jönsson P, Lindvall M (2005) Impact analysis. In: Engineering and managing software requirements. Springer, pp 117–142

  31. Kinoshita F (2008) Practices of an agile team. In: Agile 2008 conference. IEEE, pp 373–377

  32. Kirova V, Kirby N, Kothari D, Childress G (2008) Effective requirements traceability: models, tools, and practices. Bell Labs Tech J 12(4):143–157

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Klimpke L, Hildenbrand T (2009) Towards end-to-end traceability: insights and implications from five case studies. In: 2009 Fourth international conference on software engineering advances. IEEE, pp 465–470

  34. Kotter JP, Cohen DS (2002) The heart of change: Real-life stories of how people change their organizations. Harvard Business Press, Harvard

    Google Scholar 

  35. Mäder P, Cleland-Huang J (2013) A visual language for modeling and executing traceability queries. Softw Syst Modell 12(3):537–553

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Mäder P, Gotel O (2012) Ready-to-use traceability on evolving projects. In: Software and systems traceability. Springer, pp 173–194

  37. Mader P, Gotel O, Philippow I (2009) Motivation matters in the traceability trenches. In: 2009 17th IEEE international requirements engineering conference. IEEE, pp 143–148

  38. Mader P, Jones PL, Zhang Y, Cleland-Huang J (2013) Strategic traceability for safety-critical projects. IEEE Softw 30(3):58–66

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Mahmoud A, Niu N (2013) Supporting requirements traceability through refactoring. In: 2013 21st IEEE international requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 32–41

  40. Maro S, Steghöfer JP (2016) Capra: a configurable and extendable traceability management tool. In: 2016 24th International requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 407–408

  41. Maro S, Anjorin A, Wohlrab R, Steghöfer JP (2016) Traceability maintenance: factors and guidelines. In: 2016 31st IEEE/ACM international conference on automated software engineering (ASE). IEEE, pp 414–425

  42. Maro S, Steghöfer JP, Hayes J, Cleland-Huang J, Staron M (2018a) Vetting automatically generated trace links: what information is useful to human analysts? In: 2018 IEEE 26th international requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 52–63

  43. Maro S, Steghöfer JP, Staron M (2018b) Software traceability in the automotive domain: challenges and solutions. J Syst Softw 141:85–110

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Mezghani M, Kang J, Kang EB, Sedes F (2019) Clustering for traceability managing in system specifications. In: 2019 IEEE 27th international requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 257–264

  45. Nair S, De La Vara JL, Sen S (2013) A review of traceability research at the requirements engineering conference re@ 21. In: 2013 21st IEEE international requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 222–229

  46. Nair S, de la Vara JL, Melzi A, Tagliaferri G, De-La-Beaujardiere L, Belmonte F (2014) Safety evidence traceability: Problem analysis and model. In: International working conference on requirements engineering: Foundation for software quality. Springer, pp 309–324

  47. Niazi M (2006) Software process improvement: a road to success. In: International conference on product focused software process improvement. Springer, pp 395–401

  48. Pages B (2018) Bouml. https://www.bouml.fr/index.html. Accessed 23 May 2019

  49. Panis MC (2010) Successful deployment of requirements traceability in a commercial engineering organization... really. In: 2010 18th IEEE InternationalRequirements Engineering Conference (RE), IEEE, pp 303–307

  50. Peffers K, Tuunanen T, Rothenberger MA, Chatterjee S (2007) A design science research methodology for information systems research. J Manage Inform Syst 24(3):45–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Prat N, Comyn-Wattiau I, Akoka J (2014) Artifact evaluation in information systems design-science research-a holistic view. In: 9th Pacific Asia conference on information systems. p 23

  52. Pruski P, Lohar S, Goss W, Rasin A, Cleland-Huang J (2015) Tiqi: answering unstructured natural language trace queries. Requir Eng 20(3):215–232

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Ramesh B, Jarke M (2001) Toward reference models for requirements traceability. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 27(1):58–93

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Regan G, McCaffery F, McDaid K, Flood D (2012) The barriers to traceability and their potential solutions: towards a reference framework. In: 2012 38th Euromicro conference on software engineering and advanced applications. IEEE, pp 319–322

  55. Rempel P, Lehnert S, Kuschke T et al (2012) A framework for traceability tool comparison. Softwaretechnik-Trends 32(3):6–11

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Rempel P, Mäder P, Kuschke T (2013) An empirical study on project-specific traceability strategies. In: 2013 21st IEEE international requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 195–204

  57. Rempel P, Mäder P, Kuschke T, Cleland-Huang J (2014) Mind the gap: assessing the conformance of software traceability to relevant guidelines. In: Proceedings of the 36th international conference on software engineering. ACM, pp 943–954

  58. Runeson P, Höst M (2009) Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Emp Softw Eng 14(2):131

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Ståhl D, Hallén K, Bosch J (2017) Achieving traceability in large scale continuous integration and delivery deployment, usage and validation of the eiffel framework. Emp Softw Eng 22(3):967–995

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. Staron M (2006) Adopting model driven software development in industry—a case study at two companies. In: Nierstrasz O, Whittle J, Harel D, Reggio G (eds) Model driven engineering languages and systems. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 57–72

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  61. Steghöfer JP (2017) Software traceability tools: Overview and categorisation. In: Report of the GI working group “traceability/evolution”. German Informatics Society (GI), pp 2–7. http://pi.informatik.uni-siegen.de/gi/stt/38_1/01_Fachgruppenberichte/ARC_AKTE/ARC_AKTE_2017_p2_steghoefer.pdf

  62. Van Solingen R, Basili V, Caldiera G, Rombach HD (2002) Goal/question/metric (GQM) approach. Encyclopedia of Software Engineering

  63. Vara JM, Bollati VA, Jiménez Á, Marcos E (2014) Dealing with traceability in the mddof model transformations. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 40(6):555–583

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Venable J, Pries-Heje J, Baskerville R (2012) A comprehensive framework for evaluation in design science research. In: International conference on design science research in information systems. Springer, pp 423–438

  65. Wang B, Peng R, Li Y, Lai H, Wang Z (2018) Requirements traceability technologies and technology transfer decision support: a systematic review. J Syst Softw 146:59–79

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. Wieringa R (2010) Design science methodology: principles and practice. In: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE international conference on software engineering, vol 2. ACM, pp 493–494

  67. Winkler S, Pilgrim J (2010) A survey of traceability in requirements engineering and model-driven development. Softw Syst Model (SoSyM) 9(4):529–565

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Wohlrab R, Steghöfer JP, Knauss E, Maro S, Anjorin A (2016) Collaborative traceability management: challenges and opportunities. In: 2016 IEEE 24th international requirements engineering conference (RE). IEEE, pp 216–225

  69. Wolfenstetter T, Basirati MR, Böhm M, Krcmar H (2018) Introducing trails: a tool supporting traceability, integration and visualisation of engineering knowledge for product service systems development. J Syst Softw 144:342–355

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

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

Authors
  1. Salome Maro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jan-Philipp Steghöfer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Paolo Bozzelli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Henry Muccini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Salome Maro.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

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

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-021-00361-5

keywords

Search

Navigation