Traceability and its types

Traceability comprises two words i.e., trace and ability. Trace means to find someone or something and ability means to a skill or capability or talent to do something. Therefore, traceability simply means the ability to trace the requirement, to provide better quality, to find any risk, to keep and verify the record of history and production of an item or product by the means of documented identification. Due to this, it’s easy for the suppliers to reduce any risk or any issue if found and to improve the quality of the item or product. So, it’s important to have traceability rather than no traceability. Using traceability, finding requirements, and any risk to improve the quality of the product becomes very easy.

Types of Traceability

1. Source traceability: These are basically the links from requirement to stakeholders who propose these requirements.
2. Requirements traceability: These are the links between dependent requirements.
3. Design traceability: These are the links from requirement to design.
4. Testing traceability: These are the links between requirements and test cases, which ensure that each requirement has been properly tested.
5. Code traceability: These are the links between the requirements and the actual code that is developed to implement those requirements.
6. Version traceability: These are the links between different versions of software or documents, which allow for tracking of changes and updates over time.
7. Release traceability: These are the links between the requirements and the specific software release or version in which they were implemented.
8. Risk traceability: These are the links between risks identified in the project and the mitigating actions taken to address those risks.
9. Business traceability: These are the links between project requirements and overall business goals and objectives.
10. Quality traceability: These are the links between requirements, design, testing, and implementation, which ensure that quality is maintained throughout the software development process.
11. Regulatory Traceability: The capacity to track compliance to legal requirements, making sure that actions, outcomes or procedures follow rules and guidelines.
12. Data Traceability: The capacity to track the creation, modification and use of data inside an information system while maintaining the accuracy and integrity of the data.
13. Supplier Traceability: The capacity to track and authenticate the origins and actions of vendors in order to guarantee the level of quality and consistency of components or materials.
14. Process Traceability: The capacity to track the actions and phases in a process, guaranteeing that each step is carried out accurately and that differences may be found and fixed.
15. Biological Traceability: The capacity to track the beginning, development and spread of biological things, including human cells, animals and plants.

Traceability Matrix

Traceability matrix is generally used to represent the information of traceability. For mentioning the traceability of small systems usually the traceability matrix is maintained. If one requirement is dependent upon another requirement then in that row-column cell ‘D’ is mentioned and if there is a weak relationship between the requirements than corresponding entry can be denoted by ‘R’.

For Example:

Requirement ID	A	B	C	D	E	F
A		D			R
B			D
C				R
D			D			R
E
F	R			D

Traceability Matrix Structure:

Traceability Matrix