Traceability Techniques: A Critical Study

Continuous and frequently changing requirements require proper requirements change management. Traceability is essential for management of change and analysis of its impact. This research paper presents a survey of existing techniques in the domain of traceability. We identify problems with traceability definition and present criteria which is used to evaluate the existing traceability techniques. Evaluation shows that current traceability techniques are deficient and may cause problems in managing requirements change properly. We categorizing techniques into three classes argue that existing techniques may be combined to address the short comings of each other and to avail maximum benefits from traceability.