Traceability Management Architectures Supporting Total Traceability in the Context of Software Engineering

In the area of Software Engineering, traceability is defined as the capability to track requirements, their evolution and transformation in different components related to engineering process, as well as the management of the relationships between those components. However the current state of the art in traceability does not keep in mind many of the elements that compose a product, specially those created before requirements arise, nor the appropriated use of traceability to manage the knowledge underlying in order to be handled by other organizational or engineering processes. In this work we describe the architecture of a reference model that establishes a set of definitions, processes and models which allow a proper management of traceability and further uses of it, in a wider context than the one related to software development

Traceability Management Architectures Supporting Total Traceability in the Context of Software Engineering

In the area of Software Engineering, traceability is defined as the capability to track requirements, their evolution and transformation in different components related to engineering process, as well as the management of the relationships between those components. However the current state of the art in traceability does not keep in mind many of the elements that compose a product, specially those created before requirements arise, nor the appropriated use of traceability to manage the knowledge underlying in order to be handled by other organizational or engineering processes. In this work we describe the architecture of a reference model that establishes a set of definitions, processes and models which allow a proper management of traceability and further uses of it, in a wider context than the one related to software development

pecification of dependency areas in UML designs

A concept of dependency areas can help in tracing an impact of artifacts of a project (requirements, elements of the UML design, extracts of the code) and assist in their evolution. The dependency area of an element of a UML design is a part of the design that is highly influenced by the given initial element. Dependency areas are identified using sets of propagation rules and strategies. Selection strategies control application of many, possible rules. Bounding strategies limit the number of elements assigned to the areas. This paper is devoted to the specification of the rules and strategies. They are specified using an extended UML meta-model and expressions in the Object Constraint Language (OCL)

Benefits of traceability in software development

PhD ThesisFor an engineer to be able to modify successfully a complex computer-based system, he will need to understand the system's functionality. Traceability can help the engineer to gain that understanding, but several surveys have observed that traceability information is poorly recorded. This thesis argues, based on a survey of nine aerospace projects, that one of the main causes of poor recording is that Traceability does not directly benefit the development process. The recording of traceability information is best performed by the engineers directly involved in the development process, yet it is precisely these engineers who seem to obtain no direct benefit in performing this task. This can be summarised as the Traceability Benefit Problem. To overcome this problem the recording of traceability data must provide immediate, tangible benefits to the engineers involved in the current development process. A related problem that occurs in large multi-team projects that follow development processes based on predictive models (such as Waterfall or VModel) is the changing of interface documentation without adequate negotiation (referred to as Throwing the Problem over the Wall). This thesis describes, in detail, how a small automotive sensor project addressed these problems by developing a Requirements Traceability system that enabled the reuse of software and provided a basis for the negotiation of changes with their customer. Analysis of the lessons learnt from the automotive sensor and aerospace projects lead to the definition of the Traceable Development Contract. The contribution of this thesis is the description and discussion of the Traceable Development Contract, a method of coordinating the interaction of related development teams in development process that is based on a predictive development model. The Traceable Development Contract is proposed as a means of controlling the upstream team bias with respect to the imposition of changes, by employing traceability to provide a basis for the negotiation of change. By VI employing traceability in this way, it becomes beneficial to the development engineers and therefore overcomes the Traceability Benefit Problem. Finally, the thesis considers how the Traceable Development Contract traceability information can be exploited further to provide solution maturity and design metrics

Software Traceability for Multi-Agent Systems Implemented Using BDI Architecture

The development of multi-agent software systems is considered a complex task due to (a) the large number and heterogeneity of documents generated during the development of these systems, (b) the lack of support for the whole development life-cycle by existing agent-oriented methodologies requiring the use of different methodologies, and (c) the possible incompleteness of the documents and models generated during the development of the systems. In order to alleviate the above problems, in this thesis, a traceability framework is described to support the development of multi-agent systems. The framework supports automatic generation of traceability relations and identification of missing elements (i.e., completeness checking) in the models created during the development life-cycle of multi-agent systems using the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture. Traceability has been recognized as an important activity in the software development process. Traceability relations can guarantee and improve software quality and can help with several tasks such as the evolution of software systems, reuse of parts of the system, validation that a system meets its requirements, understanding of the rationale for certain design decisions, identification of common aspects of the system, and analysis of implications of changes in the system. The traceability framework presented in this thesis concentrates on multi-agent software systems developed using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Here, a traceability reference model is presented for software artefacts generated when using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Different types of relations between the artefacts are identified. The framework is based on a rule-based approach to support automatic identification of traceability relations and missing elements between the generated artefacts. Software models represented in XML were used to support the heterogeneity of models and tools used during the software development life-cycle. In the framework, the rules are specified in an extension of XQuery to support (i) representation of the consequence part of the rules, i.e. the actions to be taken when the conditions are satisfied, and (ii) extra functions to cover some of the traceability relations being proposed and completeness checking of the models. A prototype tool has been developed to illustrate and evaluate the work. The work has been evaluated in terms of recall and precision measurements in three different case studies. One small case study of an Automatic Teller Machine application, one medium case study of an Air Traffic Control Environment application, and one large case study of an Electronic Bookstore application

Software traceability for multi-agent systems implemented using BDI architecture

The development of multi-agent software systems is considered a complex task due to (a) the large number and heterogeneity of documents generated during the development of these systems, (b) the lack of support for the whole development life-cycle by existing agent-oriented methodologies requiring the use of different methodologies, and (c) the possible incompleteness of the documents and models generated during the development of the systems. In order to alleviate the above problems, in this thesis, a traceability framework is described to support the development of multi-agent systems. The framework supports automatic generation of traceability relations and identification of missing elements (i.e., completeness checking) in the models created during the development life-cycle of multi-agent systems using the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture. Traceability has been recognized as an important activity in the software development process. Traceability relations can guarantee and improve software quality and can help with several tasks such as the evolution of software systems, reuse of parts of the system, validation that a system meets its requirements, understanding of the rationale for certain design decisions, identification of common aspects of the system, and analysis of implications of changes in the system. The traceability framework presented in this thesis concentrates on multi-agent software systems developed using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Here, a traceability reference model is presented for software artefacts generated when using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Different types of relations between the artefacts are identified. The framework is based on a rule-based approach to support automatic identification of traceability relations and missing elements between the generated artefacts. Software models represented in XML were used to support the heterogeneity of models and tools used during the software development life-cycle. In the framework, the rules are specified in an extension of XQuery to support (i) representation of the consequence part of the rules, i.e. the actions to be taken when the conditions are satisfied, and (ii) extra functions to cover some of the traceability relations being proposed and completeness checking of the models. A prototype tool has been developed to illustrate and evaluate the work. The work has been evaluated in terms of recall and precision measurements in three different case studies. One small case study of an Automatic Teller Machine application, one medium case study of an Air Traffic Control Environment application, and one large case study of an Electronic Bookstore application.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo