How to link Requirements using Traceability

Traceability is the technique of documenting derivations or dependency relationships between elements of a system. Traceability is defined by establishing “Trace Links” between system elements.

TopTeam considers Trace In/Traces From, Used In/Uses and Impacts/Dependent on as “sub-types” of Trace relationships and uses them automatically in some instances. Trace relationships are automatically created for both forward and reverse searching. When you add a Traceability Link, both relationships are created.

TopTeam’s Traceability feature allows Business Analysts to perform gap analysis to determine if there are any requirements that are not linked to a higher level requirement (scope management) or if any high level requirement has not been orphaned (missed).

There are different methods by which Traceability can be created in TopTeam. These are all variations of the following menu options:

1. Add Trace Link – allows you to add directional links between existing records in TopTeam.
2. Create Traced Requirement – used to create a new Requirements record, with a “Traces From” link with the selected record.
3. Create Traced Object – used to create a new Repository Object, with a “Traces From” link with the selected record.

Add Trace Link
Refer to the section Creating Traced Requirements of the video Requirements Tree.

Creating a Traced Requirement/Record
Refer to the sub-section Adding Traces Into Link by creating a new requirement of the section Creating Traced Requirements of the video Requirements Tree.

Creating a Traced Requirement/Record by adding a record link in the Description field or any rich text field
Refer to this article on linking requirements by Adding a Record Link in Description.

Within a record’s editor, there is a Traceability tab where Traceability can be viewed and new Traces created. Additionally, existing links can be edited, deleted, made suspect, cleared of suspicion and link notes editing, etc.

Refer to this article on Traceability tab in Requirements editor.

You can quickly see how many records are Traced Into and Out of each requirement by looking at the arrows which are found in Requirements Tree, Document View and List.

How to create Traceability Links using drag-and-drop
Linking tasks to requirements in TopTeam
How to link Requirements to External Files or URLs

Revised: August 26th, 2015