Traceability data in early development phases as an enabler for decision support

Paper in proceeding, 2016

Traceability information between requirements, architectural elements and the results of test cases can be used to unearth interesting relationships between the early phases of the software development process and the software faults in the end product. For instance, complex dependencies between features and software components could lead to an increased level of flaws in the code. Such patterns can be detected and visualized as early warnings to the relevant stakeholders (e.g., the architect or the project manager). Ultimately, a fully-fledged prediction model can be developed if enough historical information is available from previous software projects. In this paper we introduce a method for building a decision support system based on historic product data.