Requirements Traceability [CALC2]

As in “[CALC1] A simple calculator”, we can automatically generate the an overview of the requirements.

The tree view

@startuml ' Nodes definition frame "<size:12>Requirement</size>\n**Generic Add**\n<size:10>CALC_ADD</size>" as CALC_ADD [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo1.html#CALC_ADD]] #C5EBC3 frame "<size:12>Requirement</size>\n**Generic Sub**\n<size:10>CALC_SUB</size>" as CALC_SUB [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo1.html#CALC_SUB]] #C5EBC3 frame "<size:12>Requirement</size>\n**Generic**\n**Multiply**\n<size:10>CALC_MULT</size>" as CALC_MULT [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo1.html#CALC_MULT]] #C5EBC3 frame "<size:12>Requirement</size>\n**Generic Divide**\n<size:10>CALC_DIV</size>" as CALC_DIV [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo1.html#CALC_DIV]] #C5EBC3 folder "<size:12>Test_Case</size>\n**Basic addition**\n**test**\n<size:10>CALC_TEST_ADD_1</size>" as CALC_TEST_ADD_1 [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo1.html#CALC_TEST_ADD_1]] #F6E27F folder "<size:12>Test_Case</size>\n**Big addition**\n**test**\n<size:10>CALC_TEST_ADD_2</size>" as CALC_TEST_ADD_2 [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo1.html#CALC_TEST_ADD_2]] #F6E27F folder "<size:12>Test_Case</size>\n**Subtract test**\n<size:10>CALC_TEST_SUB_1</size>" as CALC_TEST_SUB_1 [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo1.html#CALC_TEST_SUB_1]] #F6E27F folder "<size:12>Test_Case</size>\n**Multiplication**\n**test**\n<size:10>CALC_TEST_MULT_1</size>" as CALC_TEST_MULT_1 [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo1.html#CALC_TEST_MULT_1]] #F6E27F node "<size:12>Demonstrator</size>\n**Exact**\n**Calculator**\n<size:10>CALC2</size>" as CALC2 [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo2.html#CALC2]] #9DC5BB component "<size:12>Specification</size>\n**Big fractional**\n**numbers**\n<size:10>CALC2_1000ND</size>" as CALC2_1000ND [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo2.html#CALC2_1000ND]] #FEDCD2 folder "<size:12>Test_Case</size>\n**DIV test (demo2**\n**only)**\n<size:10>CALC2_TEST_DIV_1</size>" as CALC2_TEST_DIV_1 [[../SystemEngineering/RequirementsTraceability/demo/demo2.html#CALC2_TEST_DIV_1]] #F6E27F ' Connection definition CALC_ADD --> CALC2 CALC_SUB --> CALC2 CALC_MULT --> CALC2 CALC_DIV --> CALC2 CALC_TEST_ADD_1 --> CALC_ADD CALC_TEST_ADD_1 --> CALC2_1000ND CALC_TEST_ADD_2 --> CALC_ADD CALC_TEST_ADD_2 --> CALC2_1000ND CALC_TEST_SUB_1 --> CALC_SUB CALC_TEST_SUB_1 --> CALC2_1000ND CALC_TEST_MULT_1 --> CALC_MULT CALC_TEST_MULT_1 --> CALC2_1000ND CALC2_1000ND --> CALC_ADD CALC2_1000ND --> CALC_SUB CALC2_1000ND --> CALC_MULT CALC2_1000ND --> CALC_DIV CALC2_1000ND --> CALC2 CALC2_TEST_DIV_1 --> CALC_DIV CALC2_TEST_DIV_1 --> CALC2_1000ND @enduml

Lessons learned

  1. We can directly see that specification Big fractional numbers (CALC2_1000ND) influences all existing test-cases.

  2. Each test depends on both a (functional) requirement and a (non-functional) specification (at least in this case).

  3. The requirements-relations can become more complicated, even by adding only one requirement!

Can you imagine what will happen when we add a handful of requirements to the calculator (memory, square-root, powers)? Or, a few more non-functionals (speed-of-operation, floats). Then the complexity quickly raises even for such a simple product. And it becomes hard to predict which tests have to be adapted or rerun.

Likewise, when a few requirements become altered in an upcoming sprint: can you predict which tests will have to change? A graph, as above, will certainly help in working that out.

The table view

Lessons learned

  1. The advantage of a table-view is that is will only grow in one direction: it just becomes a bit longer.

  2. Even for a big project, it’s a great page to bookmark and use as a start-page for all kinds of requirements.
    Probably, you like to split it into the kind of ‘need’.

It would be great to show a classical Requirements Traceability matrix (RTM) too. This table shows the relations between all the requirements and all the tests.

Note

As ‘needs’ currently does not support classical RTMs, I can’t generate/show it here. See a manually made TRM to get the idea. As you will see: it’s easy to read.
However, its quite hard to grasp deep relations; then the tree above is more helpfull.

Next steps

We might add more product-variants, or more sprints to convince you that requirement-traceability is important. The only effect is more pages with (trivial) requirements, specifications or other ‘needs’. And the same to generated overviews; the later cost only a small number of lines, independent of the size of the product. So we will leave that as an exercise.

As a bonus, we will show you one more generated graph: All needs [BigTree], combining the Simple Calculator (CALC1) and Exact Calculator (CALC2) requirements.

Whenever you have more quistions, you can email me .

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