Phased development and intelligent traceability

Intelligent traceability is a method of recording the relationships between requirements at each key stage in the development process. Rather than tracing individual documents you trace all of the relevant documents, with their relationships intact.

In complex projects, various teams work in parallel on a set of data. For example, you might have a user requirements document, a system requirements document, and test documents, all that are interdependent. Ideally in a project lifecycle, documents pass through several incremental phases, where each phase is completed and signed off before the next phase begins. As an example, the analysts create user requirements for phase 1. Those user requirements are the basis for the system requirements that engineers create and the tests that tester develop. When this process is complete and the results are approved, the project moves to the next incremental phase. Then, the process starts again.

In production environments however, the process is unlikely to run that smoothly. Inevitably, analysts complete phase 1 before engineers, and engineers complete phase 1 before testers. That cycle creates a dilemma for project managers. They must decide whether the teams that are ready to progress can move to the next phase in the project or whether those teams should wait until all teams are ready.

In most projects, time is a deciding factor and the project must proceed. But proceeding before all teams are ready can lead to error and increases the difficulty of project planning and management. In IBM® Rational® DOORS® this problem is solved as teams complete a phase they can move to the next one; leaving a read-only record of the completed phase. Other teams can access and create links to that information. As the various teams complete the documents that are associated with that phase, they can add them to the set.

As a team member you build relationships between the requirements in your project by creating links, and then trace those links to track changes to the project. This traceability identifies how changes affect the requirements that they are linked with.

Because of intelligent traceability at the end of a milestone, you make a record not only of requirements, but of the relationships between them. You can also sign off on documents that are part of the same incremental phase at different times, and trace that activity. This capability makes project planning and management easier, and enhances the clarity of your project history.

To implement intelligent traceability use baseline sets. A baseline is a read-only snapshot of a module. You can create a baseline of an individual module or of a group of modules as a baseline set. A baseline set is a group of baselines that you want to treat as a single unit for project planning and management purposes. To maintain intelligent traceability in your project, use baseline sets when you create baselines of modules.

Tip: You can also use baseline sets to reduce the administrative tasks by creating a baseline of a large group of modules at the same time.

Related concepts:
Baseline sets for traceability in phased developments

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