Motivation Matters in the Traceability Trenches

Abstract

Reports from the field are few and far between when it comes to traceability. As a community, we know little more about the traceability practice in companies today than we did a decade ago. This paper reports on findings from a practitioner survey designed to get a high-level update on traceability practice and problems. What emerges is the importance of the prevailing motivation underlying traceability adoption in an organization and we characterize this in four ways. We use these perspectives to discuss our findings and their implications.