By knowing what is being designed to satisfy each requirement, you can immediately determine what has to be revisited as a result of a change up the traceability tree. Many requirements management tools have features that make this very easy to visualize. Partnership agreements may also have the launch date as a critical milestone. In such cases, traceability analysis is invaluable for shortening development cycles and increasing the likelihood of meeting target launch dates. Performing a Traceability Analysis Traceability analysis begins with gathering artifacts to trace.
Artifacts are anything developed or configured specially for the application.
These artifacts may include proposals, statements of work, requirements, functional specifications, technical specifications, copy decks, test plans, test cases, code, configuration files, and network schemas. The most important items to trace, because they yield the greatest benefits, are the requirements and the specifications. You may know the specifications document as the design or architecture document, but this document details the application being built, as opposed to the rules and functions it must comply with. To be useful for tracing, those documents should attempt to describe the subject in full. If the authors aren't diligent and only enter the items they don't want to forget, then you will be unable to account for a number of requirements and left with no standard for compliance.