A feature-oriented requirements tracing method: A study of cost-benefit analysis

Establishing and maintaining traceability links places a big burden since complex systems have especially yield an enormous number of various artifacts although traceability links is useful for requirements change impact analysis, requirements conflict analysis, and requirements consistency checking. Hence, we propose a feature-oriented requirements tracing method including value consideration and intermediate catalysis. To achieve our goal in this paper, we present (1) a meta-model of feature-oriented requirements tracing, (2) a feature-oriented requirement tracing process overview, and (3) cost-benefits analysis. The meta-model is a formalization of feature-oriented requirement tracing using UML notation. The feature-oriented requirement tracing process consists of requirements definition, feature modeling, feature prioritization, requirements linking, and traceability links evaluation. We also carry out cost-benefit analysis through a case study to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.