The Requirements Traceability Matrix is a tool that organizes a project’s requirements by linking them to their origins and tracing them throughout the project.
It is the purpose of the Manage Requirements Traceability process in the BABOK® 2.0 and it is an output of the fourth edition PMBOK®’s Collect Requirements process – a perfect example of a “management nexus” that weaves similar topics through multiple disciplines.
Tracing illustrates how a requirement relates to something else. Backward Traceability indicates from where a requirement has come, and Forward Traceability indicates which requirement(s) came from something else. Requirements can be traced based on business needs, goals, objectives, project scope, product design, test scenarios, etc. Also, high-level requirements can be traced to more detailed requirements. Requirements attributes, such as an identifier, description, owner, source, priority, stability, etc., can also be recorded in the matrix. The value of the matrix is that it can quickly demonstrate if a requirement does not appear to belong anywhere, indicating that it may be out-of-scope. Also, it can indicate that requirements are missing. For example, if a business objective has no requirements linked to it, additional requirements may be needed to meet that objective.
Here is a simple Requirements Traceability Matrix that links Katy’s three objectives for her cookies—that they taste good, and are big and safe, with six of her requirements. As can be seen, all three objectives have requirements linked to them, and there are no requirements that cannot be linked to any of the objectives.
Mitzie McCreary
November 27, 2009
While this is a great tool from the PMBOK, it is very difficult to institute in an Agile environment. Many of our requirements are defined during project sprints in JAD sessions and are immediately translated into work requests which may split a single requirement into multiple work requests. For example, a single addition of a field to our system would require a work request for the database changes, one for workflow changes, one for view changes and possibly one for user interface changes. How does a project manager develop a traceability matrix which will allow us to track all these items when the requriements details are not defined until we get the JAD set up for the high level functional requirement? Our environment may start as waterfall but quickly becomes an Agile development environment. Do you have any suggestions to deal with that? The PMBOK is getting to be less helpful as Agile becomes the development environment. We do have documentation but the details may be in all the separate work requests (in a home grown customized Lotus Notes database that helps us manage sprints and development views (different ways to slice and dice the information to show it in different views which may be more relavent to a particular function for a particular part of the development team) and not in a word document or automated tool. Talk about challenging!
Preetham
September 15, 2009
Can Requirements Traceability Matrix be used to show Client how the features directly correspond to business needs and requirements stated at the begining of the project?
tapuniversity
December 23, 2010
Preetham,
Yes a RTM can be used with clients to share and show how features directly link to their business needs and the target solution proposed for them. When kept up-to-date and simple, it can be a very helpful communication tool!