Taxonomic Trace Links: Rethinking Traceability and its Benefits

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Abdeen, Waleed, Unterkalmsteiner, Michael, Chirtoglou, Alexandros, Schimanski, Christoph Paul, Goli, Heja, Wnuk, Krzysztof
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866910921719283712
author Abdeen, Waleed
Unterkalmsteiner, Michael
Chirtoglou, Alexandros
Schimanski, Christoph Paul
Goli, Heja
Wnuk, Krzysztof
author_facet Abdeen, Waleed
Unterkalmsteiner, Michael
Chirtoglou, Alexandros
Schimanski, Christoph Paul
Goli, Heja
Wnuk, Krzysztof
contents Traceability greatly supports knowledge-intensive tasks, e.g., coverage check and impact analysis. Despite its clear benefits, the \emph{practical} implementation of traceability poses significant challenges, leading to a reduced focus on the creation and maintenance of trace links. We propose a new approach -- Taxonomic Trace Links (TTL) -- which rethinks traceability and its benefits. With TTL, trace links are created indirectly through a domain-specific taxonomy, a simplified version of a domain model. TTL has the potential to address key traceability challenges, such as the granularity of trace links, the lack of a common data structure among software development artifacts, and unclear responsibility for traceability. We explain how TTL addresses these challenges and perform an initial validation with practitioners. We identified six challenges associated with TTL implementation that need to be addressed. Finally, we propose a research roadmap to further develop and evaluate the technical solution of TTL. TTL appears to be particularly feasible in practice where a domain taxonomy is already established
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_20507
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Taxonomic Trace Links: Rethinking Traceability and its Benefits
Abdeen, Waleed
Unterkalmsteiner, Michael
Chirtoglou, Alexandros
Schimanski, Christoph Paul
Goli, Heja
Wnuk, Krzysztof
Software Engineering
Traceability greatly supports knowledge-intensive tasks, e.g., coverage check and impact analysis. Despite its clear benefits, the \emph{practical} implementation of traceability poses significant challenges, leading to a reduced focus on the creation and maintenance of trace links. We propose a new approach -- Taxonomic Trace Links (TTL) -- which rethinks traceability and its benefits. With TTL, trace links are created indirectly through a domain-specific taxonomy, a simplified version of a domain model. TTL has the potential to address key traceability challenges, such as the granularity of trace links, the lack of a common data structure among software development artifacts, and unclear responsibility for traceability. We explain how TTL addresses these challenges and perform an initial validation with practitioners. We identified six challenges associated with TTL implementation that need to be addressed. Finally, we propose a research roadmap to further develop and evaluate the technical solution of TTL. TTL appears to be particularly feasible in practice where a domain taxonomy is already established
title Taxonomic Trace Links: Rethinking Traceability and its Benefits
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.20507