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

Abstract

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 semistructured 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.

What have we learnt from the challenges of (semi‐) automated requirements traceability? A discussion on blockchain applicability

“…Recent studies reported the reluctance of stakeholders to invest in traceability [76] because they perceive traceability as an extra task that disrupts their workflow. The perceived overhead and invisible benefits demotivate stakeholders from prioritising traceability tasks, leading to the creation of wrong or missing trace links.…”

“…A more recent viewpoint was provided by Wohlrab et al. [76]. They conducted multiple case studies to identify collaboration challenges in traceability management and reported very little traceability support for external organisations.…”

Traceability in the Global Value Chain of Blueberry between Mexico and China

“…In this regard, the implementation of a traceability system is a challenge, since the different actors in the chain require collaboration between them to implement the activities related to the management of the quality, innocuousness, plant health and logistics of the product. Thus, a greater collaboration impacts with more certainty on the quality of the product (Charlebois & Haratifar 2015), but at the same time, requires a greater commitment between the different actors of the chain (Wohlrab et al, 2016). Facing such a dilemma, this study establishes in a detailed manner the activities implemented by the GVCBMC that allows for a traceability system to comply with the tracking and origin of the product, differentiation of the product, and easing the flow of information between parts.…”

Utilisation of e-collaboration tools for effective decision-making: A developing country public-sector perspective

“…Bettoni et al (2016) asserted that collaborative efforts of employees within the organisation and those of external stakeholders are both needed for effective decision-making. The advent and subsequent improvement in information and communication systems as indicated by Wohlrab et al (2018) has impacted positively collaborative efforts of organisations and made the implementation of e-collaboration easier.…”