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Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) is a documents which helps to capture all the requirements in a single document, to map all the requirements with test cased & to ensure coverage in testing phase, and helps to link the test cases and defects accurately.
Requirements traceability helps to minimize the risk of negative outcomes and maximize productivity. RTM helps to benefits a greater team efficiency, higher-quality products, and easier regulatory compliance.
By keeping accurate and traceable data in your business during product recall, ISO audits, RTM delivers confidence in securing new business. Thus helps to take control in demonstrating a lean and proactive approach to run your business.
With requirement traceability companies can move along with the flow products and can move along the value chain. Most importantly, the RTM contains all the requirement with all the possible test cases & scenarios, and keeps the track of current status of test case such as pass / fail / blocked, which help testers to understand test levels of which is performed for a particular product or a feature.
A simple RTM can be created using basic fields like requirement id, requirement description or feature, test case, and status of the test case, etc.
For project manager, it’s not uncommon for requirements of the project to undergo modification at some point. RTM helps to trace these shifts and helps to understand how it impacts every part of your project.
Traceability matrix can help in the effort to provide consistent documentation for the team. From test cases to wireframes to user stories, the RTM allows you to see if requirements are fully documented. A requirement traceability matrix can even call attention to missing requirements.
RTM helps in Tackling Defects when you must tackle the most relevant issues first, like while working on a rather extensive software project in the test manager role, with a sizeable backlog of defects.
RTM establishes complete test coverage and can aid you in filtering defects linked to crucial requirements, priority, defect severity, and more.
RTM avoids a situation like the company was not aware of an important test case that had missed
If at a situation that we don’t know the details of which test cases to run, we can summarise the crucial requirements for a new code that had not been test.
For anyone to see how the activity relates to the requirement, RTM, both forward and backward, enables product teams to associate a specific requirement with all related project artefacts, during development
There are 3 types of Requirements Traceability Matrix
- Forward Traceability is used to map requirements to the test cases and helps to ensure the project is moving in right direction
- When you map your test cases with their requirements, you will be creating a Backward Traceability Matrix. Its main purpose is to ensure that the current product being developed is on the right track
- Bidirectional Traceability allows teams to map the requirements to test cases for forwarding traceability and test cases for backward traceability in a single document. This document will help to ensure that all the specified requirements have corresponding test cases.
