COEPD – Center of Excellence for Professional Development Happy Learning
The Requirements Traceability Matrix is a document that maps and traces user requirement with test cases. The basic purpose of the Requirements Traceability Matrix is to ensure that all requirements defined for a system are tested in the particular test protocols.
A tool is used by the validation team, to ensure that the requirements are not lost during the validation project, and for auditors, to review the validation documentation ,and that tool is called as “Traceability Matrix”. This tool “Traceability Matrix” is used to track the requirements and to check the current project requirements are met or not.
The requirements traceability matrix is usually developed with the initial list of requirements i.e User Specification or Functional Requirement specification. As the Design Specifications and Test Protocols are developed, the traceability matrix is updated with updated documents.
Requirements Traceability Matrix- Work Flow
The Traceability Matrix is created at the very beginning stage of a project .
This Matrix is bi-directional , as it tracks the requirement forward by examining the output and backward by looking at the business requirement.
The above picture shows about the RTM, in which first phase is requirements, and second phase is request for proposal and the later phases are Tasks,Deliverables,Testing. Here initially it tracks the requirement forward by examining the output and backward by looking at the Request proposal. The verification process is also done concurrently .
Requirement Traceability Matrix- Parameters
- Requirement ID
- Risks
- Requirement Type
- Requirement Description
- Trace to Design Specification
- Unit Test Cases
- Integration Test Cases
- System Test Cases
- User Acceptance Test Cases
- Test scripts
Advantages of Requirement Traceability Matrix
- It confirms 100% test coverage
- It highlights any requirements missing or document inconsistencies
- It shows the overall defects or problems in execution
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It helps in analyzing or estimating the impact on the QA team’s work with respect to revisiting or re-working on the test cases
