Toward an effective automated tracing process

The research on automated tracing has noticeably advanced in the past few years. Various methodologies and tools have been proposed in the literature to provide automatic support for establishing and maintaining traceability information in software systems. This movement is motivated by the increasing attention traceability has been receiving as a de jure standard in software quality assurance. Following that effort, in this research proposal we describe several research directions related to enhancing the effectiveness of automated tracing tools and techniques. Our main research objective is to advance the state of the art in this filed. We present our suggested contributions through a set of incremental enhancements over the conventional automated tracing process, and briefly describe a set of strategies for assessing these contributions impact on the process.