Projects often have a lot of requirements and project managers need to have a system or process to trace all of the requirements that they have already met and still need to meet. Requirements tracing, in project management, provides a link between the requirements and work products developed to verify the requirements. The requirements traceability matrix is a grid that links the requirements from where the origin is to where the deliverables are. Implementation of this tool ensures that each of the requirements provides additional business value by linking it to the project and business objectives.
Tracking the product requirements throughout the project life cycle ensures that all requirements approved and documented are delivered at the end of the project. Moreover, it also provides a structure to manage the changes in the product scope.
There are several requirements to create the requirement traceability matrix and these include the business needs, project objectives, project scope, product design, product developmental plan, test strategy and other high-level requirements.
Attributes that are associated with the requirements are recorded in the matrix to help determine the information about a particular requirement. Examples of attributes used in this particular project management tool include text descriptions of the requirement, rationale, source, priority, current status and date.
This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.