Requirement traceability

Requirement traceability is a relationship between two requirements that implies the source, derivation, or dependencies between the artifacts.

Traceability relationships help you determine the extent to which your model satisfies the project requirements. As elements or their associated requirements change, you can use traceability relationships to monitor the impact of these changes.

Within Rational® RequisitePro®, you can establish traceability between a requirement and one or more other requirements. While defining these traceability relationships in the requirement properties, you can imply source, derivation, or dependency with directional "from" and "to" indicators. For example, you can establish traceability from feature requirements to use-case requirements. If the feature requirement changes during the project to meet new technical or business needs, the traceability relationship is flagged as "suspect" , indicating a need to evaluate the use case for impact.

Requirement traceability with associated model elements

This integration of requirements and model elements involves two kinds of traceability relationships:

Use the Requirement Trace view to examine traceability relationships between requirements. Use the Requirement Query Results view to examine the results of queries that are created in RequisitePro views; these include Traceability Matrix and Traceability Tree views. For more information on direct and indirect associations and their impact on requirement traceability, see the related concept topics in the following list.

Parent topic: Requirement concepts and artifacts

Related concepts
Direct associations
Indirect associations
Associations between requirements and model elements

Related tasks
Viewing requirements traceability
Viewing requirements in query results

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