Tool Mentor: Enabling Lifecycle Traceability with Rational Software Architect
This tool mentor explains how to enable lifecycle traceability of design artifacts using Rational Software Architect
Tool: Rational Software Architect
Relationships
Main Description

Traceability between the lifecycle artifacts is important for governance and impact analysis, it facilitates the overall quality of the software or systems application being developed, and enables teams to make informed changes, reduce risk, and improve agility.

By creating relationships between software artifacts across all disciplines, including design management, requirements management, change and configuration management, and quality management, and establishing lifecycle traceability, you can improve quality in the following ways:

  • Share and combine information about projects so that project teams and stakeholders are better able to understand the application being developed.
  • Assess and manage the impact of change on elements in the design by performing impact analysis.
  • Identify and close traceability gaps to ensure full coverage across requirements, design, development, and test.
  • Ensure that the design satisfies the business requirements.
  • View related artifacts and make informed decisions about the project.

The following topics are useful to understand lifecycle integration and traceability:

Resources to gain hands-on experience on design management features: