Collaborative traceability management: a multiple case study from the perspectives of organization, process, and culture

Traceability is crucial for many activities in software and systems engineering including monitoring the development progress, and proving compliance with standards. In practice, the use and maintenance of trace links are challenging as artifacts undergo constant change, and development takes place in distributed scenarios with multiple collaborating stakeholders. Although traceability management in general has been addressed in previous studies, there is a need for empirical insights into the collaborative aspects of traceability management and how it is situated in existing development contexts. The study reported in this paper aims to close this gap by investigating the relation of collaboration and traceability management, based on an understanding of characteristics of the development effort. In our multiple exploratory case study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 individuals from 15 industrial projects. We explored which challenges arise, how traceability management can support collaboration, how collaboration relates to traceability management approaches, and what characteristics of the development effort influence traceability management and collaboration. We found that practitioners struggle with the following challenges: (1) collaboration across team and tool boundaries, (2) conveying the benefits of traceability, and (3) traceability maintenance. If these challenges are addressed, we found that traceability can facilitate communication and knowledge management in distributed contexts. Moreover, there exist multiple approaches to traceability management with diverse collaboration approaches, i.e., requirements-centered, developer-driven, and mixed approaches. While traceability can be leveraged in software development with both agile and plan-driven paradigms, a certain level of rigor is needed to realize its benefits and overcome challenges. To support practitioners, we provide principles of collaborative traceability management. The main contribution of this paper is empirical evidence of how culture, processes, and organization impact traceability management and collaboration, and principles to support practitioners with collaborative traceability management. We show that collaboration and traceability management have the potential to be mutually beneficial—when investing in one, also the other one is positively affected

Collaborative traceability management: a multiple case study from the perspectives of organization, process, and culture

Traceability is crucial for many activities in software and systems engineering including monitoring the development progress, and proving compliance with standards. In practice, the use and maintenance of trace links are challenging as artifacts undergo constant change, and development takes place in distributed scenarios with multiple collaborating stakeholders. Although traceability management in general has been addressed in previous studies, there is a need for empirical insights into the collaborative aspects of traceability management and how it is situated in existing development contexts. The study reported in this paper aims to close this gap by investigating the relation of collaboration and traceability management, based on an understanding of characteristics of the development effort. In our multiple exploratory case study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 individuals from 15 industrial projects. We explored which challenges arise, how traceability management can support collaboration, how collaboration relates to traceability management approaches, and what characteristics of the development effort influence traceability management and collaboration. We found that practitioners struggle with the following challenges: (1) collaboration across team and tool boundaries, (2) conveying the benefits of traceability, and (3) traceability maintenance. If these challenges are addressed, we found that traceability can facilitate communication and knowledge management in distributed contexts. Moreover, there exist multiple approaches to traceability management with diverse collaboration approaches, i.e., requirements-centered, developer-driven, and mixed approaches. While traceability can be leveraged in software development with both agile and plan-driven paradigms, a certain level of rigor is needed to realize its benefits and overcome challenges. To support practitioners, we provide principles of collaborative traceability management. The main contribution of this paper is empirical evidence of how culture, processes, and organization impact traceability management and collaboration, and principles to support practitioners with collaborative traceability management. We show that collaboration and traceability management have the potential to be mutually beneficial—when investing in one, also the other one is positively affected

Improving software traceability tools and processes

Context: Development of large and complex software leads to a large number of interconnected artifacts such as requirements, design models, code and implementation. Traceability enables understanding and managing these artifacts as they evolve. However, establishing traceability is not trivial. It requires the development organization to design effective traceability strategies and provide tools to support the traceability activities. Establishing traceability in practice faces many challenges such as the amount of effort needed to establish traceability, unclear traceability processes and difficulty in measuring the benefits of traceability. Objective: The overall objective of this research is to improve traceability processes and tools in software development. In this thesis we started with exploring the state of the art as well as the state of practice of traceability in order to identify persisting challenges and existing solutions. We then propose and implement solutions for four of the identified challenges: manual work of establishing traceability, lack of configurable tools, diverse artifacts and tools, and unclear traceability processes. Method: To identify existing traceability challenges and solutions, we conducted a systematic tertiary literature review, a multi-vocal literature review, and a case study to understand how these challenges and solutions manifest in practice. To design solutions we took an empirical approach where we used case studies and design science for the different studies. Results: Our results show that there are still many traceability challenges which are not solved by current solutions in literature due to practical constraints and limitations that exist especially in safety critical domains. To address the challenge of manual work needed to maintain trace links we propose a set of important factors and guidelines for traceability maintenance aimed at traceability tool developers and companies acquiring traceability tools. The feasibility of these factors and guidelines are demonstrated through a prototype implementation. The prototype implementation also shows how to design traceability solutions that are both configurable and support tracing to and from diverse artifacts and tools. To address the challenge of manual work in creating traceability links we have investigated how to improve the trace link vetting process as part of a way to transfer automated techniques of creating trace links to industry. We provide insights and lessons learned on how to improve the trace link vetting process. Lastly the thesis proposes a traceability introduction methodology (TracIMo), which consists of concrete steps that companies can take to design, deploy and evaluate traceability strategies

The Automotive Domain—From Multi-Disciplinarity to Trans-Disciplinarity

The automotive domain has witnessed a tremendous growth in the amount of software deployed in cars. The car no longer contains mechanical components only, but more and more functionality is controlled by embedded systems. Due to this, the domain is multi-disciplinary, involving engineers from mechanical, electrical, electronics and software disciplines. However, this is now changing as the problems being addressed in the domain are becoming more complex. Problems are now societal such as smart cities or green mobility. Solving such complex problems requires going beyond multi-disciplinarity and towards transdisciplinarity. This involves including stakeholders that represent the users and also the societal interests. This paper discusses opportunities and challenges for trans-disciplinarity in the automotive domain

Addressing Traceability Challenges in the Development of Embedded Systems

Context: Currently, development efforts in embedded systems lead to a large number of interconnected artifacts. Traceability enables understanding and managing these artifacts. However, establishing traceability is not a trivial task, it requires the development organization to plan how traceability will fit into its processes and provide tools to support traceability establishment. In practice, guidelines for establishing traceability are lacking. Therefore, companies struggle with establishing traceability and making the most of traceability.Objective: The overall objective of this research is to improve traceability processes and tools for embedded systems development. In this thesis, we started with first understanding the domain and practical traceability challenges and also investigated how traceability tools can be improved.Method:Since establishing traceability is a practical problem, our research is conducted in close collaboration with industry partners. We conducted empirical studies to understand which traceability challenges exist and designed solutions for some of these challenges. Concretely, we used action research, case study and design science methods for the different studies.Results:Our studies show that establishing traceability in practice has several challenges, the most prominent ones being: the manual work of establishing traceability is high; the engineers responsible for creating the links perceive it as an overhead; lack of tools to enable using traceability;\ua0lack of methods and tools to measure its quality; no universal standards for traceability to be exchanged and it is difficult to measure the return on investment of establishing traceability.\ua0To reduce the amount of manual work needed to maintain traceability links, we designed guidelines for traceability tool developers. We also show the feasibility of a configurable and extendable traceability management tool. Contributions: As part of this thesis, we have elicited persistent traceability challenges in development of embedded systems development. This list of challenges can also be used by other researchers who are interested in the topic of traceability for embedded systems development. As a first initiative towards solving these challenges, we propose important factors and guidelines for traceability tool developers and organizations that need to acquire traceability tools. Lastly, we have demonstrated the feasibility of these factors and guidelines through a prototype implementation. This implementation is open source and available for industry to use in their development and for other researchers to use for studies and extend the tool

Capra: A Configurable and Extendable Traceability Management Tool

Traceability is a known problem both in academia and industry. One of the main challenges is that there is no one solution that will solve traceability problems for everyone in industry. Traceability needs are dependent on the context of the organization and can differ from project to project in the same organization. To cater for this problem we have developed Capra, an open source, flexible, configurable and extendable traceability management tool. Capra can be tailored according to specific traceability needs of individual projects and organizations. \ua9 2016 IEEE

Deployment of Offline Learning Management Systems: Comparing the Performance of Selected Micro-servers in Tanzania

Low-powered mobile devices such as Raspberry Pis and tablets can be used as micro-servers to implement offline Learning Management Systems (LMS). Despite their potential, especially for low-income countries, such as Tanzania, no research is available detailing the affordances of these devices for supporting LMS features. This study investigated the suitability of various low-cost micro-servers for deploying LMSs. It compared the performance of the Raspberry Pi, Android tablet, and Chromebook in terms of LMS benchmarking, response time, and resource utilisation. Results showed all devices had sufficient hardware resources to support the LMS, however, software stacks, I/O performance, and platform optimisations affected the micro-servers' performance. The Chromebook had the best performance in terms of response time, followed by the Raspberry Pi and tablets. In terms of cost, the Raspberry PI was the cheapest option.  The installation process for tablets was more cumbersome than the other devices, meaning the devices with better tooling and a more conventional software stack were a better option for deploying offline micro-servers

An ISO 26262 compliant design flow and tool for automotive multicore systems

The complex interactions between suppliers and OEMs as well as between suppliers in the automotive industry make it necessary to clearly define processes and models for the exchange of information between different companies. Especially when several suppliers are jointly working on the same product, reducing friction and adhering to common standards are a necessity. In addition, standards like AUTOSAR and ISO 26262 put additional requirements on the processes and tools.In this paper, we report on our efforts to standardise the design flow and the modelling environment for automotive suppliers. In particular, we analyse the existing design flows at the suppliers, as well as the current state of an advanced automotive modelling tool, the Amalthea platform. Furthermore, we analyse compliance of both the design flows and the platform with the ISO 26262 standard, identifying which aspects of the standard are already covered and which are currently missing. From this, we derive recommendations and a roadmap to achieve full coverage of the standard with the aim of providing a single integrated platform with an accompanying design methodology

An ISO 26262 compliant design flow and tool for automotive multicore systems

The complex interactions between suppliers and OEMs as well as between suppliers in the automotive industry make it necessary to clearly define processes and models for the exchange of information between different companies. Especially when several suppliers are jointly working on the same product, reducing friction and adhering to common standards are a necessity. In addition, standards like AUTOSAR and ISO 26262 put additional requirements on the processes and tools.In this paper, we report on our efforts to standardise the design flow and the modelling environment for automotive suppliers. In particular, we analyse the existing design flows at the suppliers, as well as the current state of an advanced automotive modelling tool, the Amalthea platform. Furthermore, we analyse compliance of both the design flows and the platform with the ISO 26262 standard, identifying which aspects of the standard are already covered and which are currently missing. From this, we derive recommendations and a roadmap to achieve full coverage of the standard with the aim of providing a single integrated platform with an accompanying design methodology

Collaborative Traceability Management: Challenges and Opportunities

Traceability and the management of tracing links are important for various reasons, including to manage knowledge about a complex software system, to monitor the progress of its development, and to prove that it is developed in accordance to regulations. However, maintaining tracing links and using them in a beneficial way proves to be challenging in practice. In this paper, we investigate traceability and its management as a collaboration problem. Based on 15 industrial cases and 24 semi-structured interviews we identify a) challenges in collaborative traceability management and b) how traceability management can be used to enable collaboration. Our findings show that main challenges are boundaries between organizations and tools, a lack of common goals and responsibilities, and the difficulty of collaboratively maintaining trace links. On the other hand, traceability can be an important facilitator for documentation and knowledge management