Introduction

• Description

  There is no mention of traceability anywhere in the vision scenario. Traceability is truly behind the scenes. The engineer is not putting traceability in place explicitly, it is established automatically via her actions and via the actions of others. Traceability of the requirements trade-offs and negotiations are automatically captured from the tooling environments she uses, along with the rationale. Traceability data is presented to her in a ready-to-use and usable manner as a by-product of using her tools, and is never explicitly sought. Traceability never disrupts her from her primary tasks and she does not even spend a micro second thinking about it. Many software components, systems and services are customized or even composed by engineers who are unaware of the detailed specifics of the underlying technologies and traceability information.

• Problem Addressed

  Traceability is perceived as, or actually is, a burden by practitioners as it is mostly manual and repetitive in nature. Establishing or using traceability often interrupts tasks that are considered more primary when it comes to software and systems development, and requires engineers to use special-purpose tools. Moreover, traceability is not always considered as an essential and integral part of the development process, and is often regarded as a hindrance, with traceability functionality lacking in many general-purpose development tools. Establishing traceability manually is also open to human error and inconsistency, and its quality is only as good as the efforts of its weakest human link. Traceability should not be the goal of software and systems development, it should not force a break in the engineer