Measuring the impact of traceability on the cost of Software Product Lines using COPLIMO

Tracing helps assuring product quality, especially in large and complex systems such as Software Product Lines, where numerous artifacts and documents need to be linked and managed. Unfortunately, engineers and project managers rarely accord sufficient attention and importance to this approach, and adopt a traceability implementation strategy. This is due to its complexity and to the difficulties faced when implementing trace links especially costs that tracing can generates in short term. As we strongly believe that a quantitative estimation of the impact of traceability on Software Product Line´s cost can help better understanding its usefulness, we present in this paper an analysis of this issue based on COPLIMO cost estimation model. The analysis shows that implementing trace links while developing the Software Product Line generates additional costs, but helps reducing them as the Product Line is used.