Requirement Traceability in Software Development Process: An Empirical Approach

One of the biggest challenges in the software industry is to ensure that a software product meets all user specifications. In this paper, we propose to establish traceability of functional requirements expressed in a SRS document among different UML diagrams that are used in requirement analysis and design phases. We have used Z notation as the formal language for representing the SRS and design artifacts and this formal notation is used to automatically establish trace paths based on certain rules. We present an implementation methodology based on XML for development of a prototype. A snapshot of some of the results based on a case study has been shown for illustration of our approach. Our approach will help in identifying missing requirements or incomplete requirement coverage as well highlight the impact points for effective change management of requirements.