What is the purpose of the Requirement Traceability Matrix?

In any Project, It starts with a requirement elicitation technique from the Client side where Business Requirements and stakeholder Requirements are converted into Functional requirements and Non Functional Requirements.
There Requirements are Coded by the technical team and then Tested by the Testing team before finally it goes Live and is ready to use.

So, its imperative to have all your requirements at one common place where all the stakeholders can get to see where the requirements are at that point of time and what testings have been done on those requirements and whether it was a Pass/Fail and comments about what has gone wrong or what improvements need to be made to make it a success.

So, in businesses they have come up with a Matrix which covers all the requirements through which any stakeholder can trace them to see where they stand in the project timeline. That is known as Requirement Traceability Matrix also called as RTM. This RTM helps the Project manager as well as all the stakeholders to not miss any requirements and make sure that they test each and every requirement ultimately leading to a successful product satisfying the Client.

In a requirement Traceability matrix , you can map a Requirement or Multiple Requirements to a Test case and Vice Versa. That way one can trace any test case to a requirement and vice versa. It also helps in faster business impact assessment if there is any problem in the business side.

Requirement Traceability matrix are generally created using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. In a Waterfall Model, they generally consist of the following Columns.

1) Business Requirement : This Column will consist of all the Generic High level Requirements from the Client.
2) Functional/Non Functional requirement : This Column will consist of all the Functional and Non Functional Requirements channeled from the Business Requirements.
3) Design : This column describes What are the components of design we need to carry out the Functional / non functional requirement.
4) Code : This Will have the Program Code and who is responsible for Coding the requirement.
5) Test Scenario : This has what are the test scenarios that will be carried out for the test to be a success/complete.
6) Test Case : This is nothing but a Test Case Number given for each Test case.
7) Pass/Fail : This column will have the Pass or Fail result. Mostly Pass will be in Green color and Fail will be in red color.
8) Comments: Here the tester will put in additional comments pertaining to each requirement whether it’s a Pass/Fail, What went well or any need for improvement.

However in a Agile Methodology, we are going to have a slightly different approach for the RTM. Most of the columns will be the same but however we will look at what columns will be there in detail.

1) Business Requirement : This Column will consist of all the Generic High level Requirements from the Client in the form of EPIC’s.
2) Functional/Non Functional requirement : This Column will consist of all the Functional and Non Functional Requirements channeled from the Business Requirements in terms of User Stories.
3) Design : This column describes What are the components of design we need to carry out the Functional / non functional requirement.
4) Code : This Will have the Program Code and who is responsible for Coding the requirement.
5) Test Scenario : This has what are the test scenarios that will be carried out for the test to be a success/complete.
6) Test Case : This is nothing but a Test Case Number given for each Test case.
7) Pass/Fail : This column will have the Pass or Fail result. Mostly Pass will be in Green color and Fail will be in red color.
8) Comments: Here the tester will put in additional comments pertaining to each requirement whether it’s a Pass/Fail, What went well or any need for improvement.