A Vision for Product Traceability Based on Semantics of Artifacts.

In the face of extensive attention form both the research community and the industry, traceability there still lacks of a supporting methodology that enables traceability throughout the whole lifecycle of a system. In particular, attention need to be given to geographically distributed development efforts where developers are likely to use different representation formats and a variety of tools for the product development. An approach to methodological support for artifact management and traceability is presented in this paper. Fragments from different development phases (i.e., requirements specification, design, code, test scenarios, and documentation) are linked to concepts from a domain model and further, interlinked through it. A conceptual domain model is constructed from domain specific concepts (nodes) and quantified relationships between them. An initial domain model and the weights for concept relations are based on the experts' experience and knowledge from previous projects. The main contribution of this work is two fold. First, the approach covers the whole product traceability. Second, prediction and assessment of impact are enabled by tracing related fragments through relations of concepts in a domain model.