Versions Compared

Version Old Version 1 New Version Current
Changes made by

Bruno Marotta

Bruno Marotta

Saved on

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.
A traceability matrix is

Overview

The Traceability Matrix displays a two-dimensional matrix

used in requirements management, software development, and other fields to establish and track the relationships between different artifacts. It provides a way to demonstrate the alignment and coverage between various requirements, design elements, test cases, and other project deliverables.
Table of Contents

Operations

Feature

Description

Configure

showing the links between two sets of requirements or other types of items. For example, you could have high-level customer features displayed as rows and their related lower-level functional requirements as columns. Links can be created and deleted on the fly. The Traceability Matrix helps you to visualize complex relationships within a set of requirements and to quickly repair incorrect links.

To navigate to the Traceability Matrix, open a project and select the Traceability Matrix at the Boards Menu.

Info

It is important to understand that the effective use of the Traceability Matrix depends on the practices of your organization and its development process. You need to take into account how different types of requirements or other types of issues are structured, as well as how they are linked together and used. An organization might have different practices for different situations, so different matrices can be defined and saved in the Traceability View.

The sheer number of requirements in a project may also be a challenge to understanding traceability, so identifying significant subsets of the requirements and saving them in different views also promotes an effective solution.

Table of Contents
Image Added

Traceability Matrix Layout

A panel on the left of the traceability view provides a list of saved views and context menu operations them.

The requirements are arranged in a two-dimensional matrix. Arrows appear in the intersections of the rows and columns where the corresponding requirements are linked. For example, if customer features form the rows of the matrix and functional requirements form the columns, then the arrows show which functional requirements are linked to their customer features. The arrows show the direction of the link. A link shown as A → B indicates that A has what Jira calls an “outbound” link to B, while B has an “inbound” link to A. Hovering over an arrow reveals the type of the link.

Operations

Purpose

Action

New View

Configures the work items and

relations

links to display in the matrix. See the

Configure View chapter below

section “Configure View” below.

Save

Save the changes in an existing view.

Save As

Saves a new view or saves and existing view with a new name.

Refresh

Rebuild the matrix with fresh data from the server

Clear

Empty the current matrix

.

Use it if you want to start your work from scratch

Download

Download the matrix as an Excel spreadsheet. Please note that this operation might take

very

a long time depending on the matrix size.

Click on

Select an empty cell to add a relation between the work items. See

Adding and Deleting links below

section “Adding Links” below.

Click on

Select a cell with a link to delete the link. See

Adding and Deleting links below
Image Removed

Configure View

Through this option, you can

section “Deleting Links” below.

New View

This option allows you to configure the matrix by selecting defining the scope of the work items you want to display have displayed in the columns and rows. You can also choose the type types of link the links you want to display have displayed between the work items. The scope is determined based either on the types of the items or a query.

  • Work items types: Select which types of work items should be included in the given axis.

  • Queries: Select a Query as the source for the selected axis.Work items type: Select which work item types you would like to see in the of the work items for the given axis.

  • Link types: Define the types of links to be displayed in the matrix.

Image Removed

By pressing

  • Scope: When checked, displays all requirements in both axis regardless of them being linked or not. If not checked, only shows work items that have a link between both axis.

image-20240917-123348.pngImage Added

By selecting Show, a matrix is generated showing including the selected scope items in the columns and rowsdefined scope. The links of betwen the selected types items are also shown inside in the matrix, indicating a link relationship between the work itemsthem.

Adding

and deleting

links

From the matrix, new New links can also be added between the any two displayed work items . To do so, click on directly in the matrix by selecting the cell intersecting the two work items that you want to add the link to. Please note that you can only link types selected in the configure view. 

Image Modified

Deleting links

To delete an existing link, just click on select the desired link in the matrix. A confirmation popup allows you to confirm the deletion. If there is more than one link type between the work items, you can unselect the links you don't do not want to delete.

Image Modified