Requirements tracing in a distributed online collaboration system

Tracing requirements to their implementation in code is vital, especially in large-scale software systems as these traceability links not only help understanding the system but also support in cost and effort estimation processes and the overall maintenance of the software. However, creating these links can be tedious work when done manually. In this work, several approaches are depicted together with their strengths and possible disadvantages compared to other processes. Furthermore a method based trace validation and prediction algorithm is introduced, which can be used to find missing traces or to validate implementations. This method based approach is adapted to work with (JAVA) classes as well by using a similar relationship model (methods are using caller - callee relationships). Both versions and their implementation in the DesignSpace will be described and some application examples shown.