COEPD – Center of Excellence for Professional Development Happy Learning
Requirement Traceability Matrix is the document which tracks the requirements of the users with the help of test cases. Requirement Traceability Matrix tracks the requirements given by stakeholders are met or not at the current stage of the project. Requirement Traceability Matrix consists all the user requirements given by stakeholders in one document which will be prepared at the end of the software development life cycle. Main motive to prepare Requirement Traceability Matrix is to check all the requirements are functional or not while testing. The requirements given by the stakeholders are called as project vision. Product owner then explains the project vision to the team by preparing and explaining an epic. Epics will be further divided into the user stories as per the priority. Each user story consists the unique functionality that needs to be developed and needs to be in working condition at the end of each sprint. Each user story needs to be executed. The question arises here is how the team will track that all the functionalities met the given criteria as per the user story. So, the document used to track that all the functionalities met the given criteria is called as Requirement Traceability Matrix. Requirement Traceability Matrix is a document which consist all the possible test case scenarios whether passed or failed at the current state of the project. In some of the IT, Healthcare, Gaming companies are using Requirement Traceability Matrix as the part of the compliance as they need a traceability at every stage and in every aspect of the project. Requirement Traceability Matrix is based on the project vision and the deliverables. Project manager needs Requirement Traceability Matrix to understand that the work is progressing as per vision or not. In the RTM, all the requirements/user stories kept serially and have to update the RTM by testing the developed functionalities. Requirement Traceability Matrix need to updated by putting the remarks as passed, failed, working.
There are some Requirement Traceability Matrix parameters mentioned below:
1. Requirement/user story ID
Unique number given to each user story/ requirement
2. Requirement/user story description:
Description of the requirement that is what need to do for building a functionality
3. Test case specification:
Detailed specification of test case as extracted from requirements
4. Verification status
Verification status means test case is successful or failed or subcase needed need to update.
These parameters might be different as per the project vision and the type of the industry. The main motive of every tester is understanding the clients’ requirements and deliver the defect free product as per product vision. With the business requirement document and technical requirement document testers prepares test cases and by examining update the same as per protocol. Requirement traceability matrix demonstrate how requirements are links to the validation process. The purpose behind this type of traceability is to verify that we are not expanding the scope of the project by adding code, design elements, test or other work that is not specified in the requirements. It maps test cases to requirements.
There are three types of Requirement Traceability Matrix:
1. Forward Traceability
2. Backward or Reverse Traceability
3. Forward + Backward (bi-directional) Traceability
Below mentioned are the purposes of Requirement Traceability Matrix:
1. Achieve the desired goals
2. Making the correct decision
3. Managing the project effectively
4. Validating the test cases prepared
