Use Case to Source Code Traceability: The Developer Navigation View Point

Requirements traceability is a challenge for modern software projects where task dependencies and technical experspread across system developers, abstract model representations such as use cases, and a myriad of code artefacts. This paper presents an approach that monitors the navigation trails left by developers when building code artefacts to realise project use cases. These trails are analysed to generate a relevance ranking of entities that constitute a traceability link between uses cases and code artefacts and the developers responsible for them. Investigation in a software development scenario shows that a range of use case traceability questions can be answered through visualisations which present ordered relevance lists of the entities associated with use cases and by the use of trace graphs where the size of nodes show the importance, or ’information centrality’, of system entities.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: RE
• Authors: Inah Omoronyia, Guttorm Sindre, Marc Roper, John D. Ferguson, Murray Wood
• Keywords: Case Traceability Questions, Code Artefacts, RE 2009, Requirements Traceability