What is Traceability matrix?

Where it is used practically and whether it is necessary in development

activities or testing activities?
What is the structure or Architecture of Traceability matrix?

Ans:

"In a software development life cycle, requirements are translated into

specifications based on which code is developed. Once the construction
process is complete, the product is put through various stages of testing
before it finally goes live.

Requirement: A requirement describes a condition or capability to which a

system must conform; either derived directly from user needs, or stated in a
contract, standard, specification, or other formally imposed document.

Specification: A declarative description of what something is or does.

Traceability is the common thread that ensures that the verification and
validation of the product is complete. Requirements tracing is the process of
documenting the links between the user requirements for the system you're
building and the work products developed to implement and verify those
requirements. These work products include software requirements, design
specifications, software code, test plans and other artifacts of the systems
development process. Requirements tracing helps the project team to
understand which parts of the design and code implement the user's
requirements, and which tests are necessary to verify that the user's
requirements have been implemented correctly. Table 1 illustrates the
concept of a trace matrix.

Table1
Requirement Functional Design Code section Test Condition Defect ID
Specification Specification
1 1.1 3.1 Line 300-350 12 D2

13 -

14 D6
1.2 3.2 Line 450-600 21 -

22 -

23 -

Table1: assumes that the trace matrix includes development activities as

well. However, this is not always possible as data may not be readily
available. In the above example, Requirement Number 1 has resulted in two
defects (D2 and D6). These can be traced back to Conditions 12 and 14
respectively. By drilling down further, it is possible to identify the impacted
specifications and the relevant code section. Where the trace excludes
construction activity, the trace matrix should include other elements of the
test suite as given in Table 2.

Table2 :

Requirement Functional Test Test Case Test Script Defect ID

Specification Condition
1 1.1 12 12.1/12.2 T5 D2

13 13.1/13.2/13.3 T6 -

14 14.1 T6 D6
1.2 21 21.1 T8 -

22 22.1/22.2 T8 -

23 23.1/23.2/23.3 T8 -

Table 2: drills further into the actual test case that failed. This gives
additional information to the developer to be able to zoom into the cause of
the defect as well as assist the users in assigning a severity classification to
the defect. For example, the defect may not relate to a critical functionality
or the user could be trained to avoid the defect. These decisions become
imperative when the time to fix is high and the go-live date is non
negotiable.

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What is Traceability matrix?

Where it is used practically and whether it is necessary in development activities or
testing activities?
What is the structure or Architecture of Traceability matrix?

Traceability Matrix is a document used for mapping the Test Cases with
Requirements.
It's used for identifying the Requirements Coverage....i.e. whether the test cases written
are sufficient for the particular requirement or not.

Delivery
Sr. Re
Functionality Rel Rel
No. l
1.0 1.2
1.1

Features for a module defined by developers submitted for QA review release helps tester
to trace the functionality in build.
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TM is a very important document of the SDLC. It helps you in managing the traceability
of your requirements starting from SRS, HLD, DDD, Test Cases.

From this single document you can came to know whether requirement are correctly
mapped or not in various artifacts developed in various phased of the SLDC.

It basically contains the references of the section for e.g. If Home Page is in Section 1
then same needs to be mapped in HLD, DDD, and respective test cases....
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