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The Requirements Traceability Matrix
What is the Requirements Traceability Matrix? It’s a grid or a matrix that links the product requirements from their origin to the ultimate scope we’re going to deliver. It’s a list of the requirements that we’ve gathered from our stakeholders and our customer, and it links those to the deliverables that we are ultimately delivering as part of our project. We’re seeing that those deliverables satisfy the requirements we gathered.
It also provides a structure for managing any changes to the product scope as the project goes along. So why do we do this with this requirements traceability matrix and why do we create this? Well, it helps us ensure that each requirement adds business value by specifically linking it to the business and project objectives that we are delivering. It also provides a structure for managing those changes as we go along.
The process of tracing those requirements will include a few different things as you go along your journey. First of all, we’re gathering the business needs, the opportunities that we have the goals and the objectives of the project, the project objectives and the project’s scope and work breakdown structure deliverables. So we’ve got our requirements with the project scope which is broken it down further into the actual small deliverables that each individual team will be working on and delivering. That’s the most we can break it down to make it nice and easy for people to work on, in small increments.
We’ve got the product’s design – what is it going to look like? The product development test strategy and test scenarios, because we’re looking at the acceptance criteria. How does that link back to those requirements? That’s a very important part of the test strategy, to make sure that those requirements are validated and those deliverables are validated by our customers.
Lastly, the high-level requirements to the more detailed requirements. There are a few attributes that we will put into this Requirements Traceability Matrix, and that will basically help define the key information about those requirements. So these attributes will include a unique identifier – maybe it’s number 103 for example or F75 whatever the actual identifier is that makes sense for the project that you’re working on.
We’ve got a textual description – so an actual description of that particular requirement, and the rationale for its inclusion, who owns that requirement and where it’s come from, the priority 1 to 5 is usually a good measure, the version of that requirement or the version of that deliverable, the current status and the date. Then when we’re looking at that we still also need to match that to the deliverables.
And that is the requirements traceability matrix.
– David McLachlan