Tool-Based Requirement Traceability between Requirement and Design Artifacts

Book excerpt: Processes for developing safety-critical systems impose special demands on ensuring requirements traceability. Achieving valuable traceability information, however, is especially difficult concerning the transition from requirements to design. Bernhard Turban analyzes systems and software engineering theories cross-cutting the issue (embedded systems development, systems engineering, software engineering, requirements engineering and management, design theory and processes for safety-critical systems). As a solution, the author proposes a new tool approach to support designers in their thinking in order to achieve traceability as a by-product to normal design activities and to extend traceability information with information about design decision rationale.