What is Requirements Traceability in Quality Center?

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You may have heard the term RTM (Requirement Traceability Matrix) being used frequently by testing professionals. In any software development project the objective is to address a business problem.

Generally the business problem will be documented and elaborated by a Business Analyst in the form of BRD (Business Requirement Document). Then the System Analyst converts the BRD into a detailed functional requirement or specification document (FRD or FSD). QA/Testing staff will convert those functional requirements into tests (test cases) which can be used for test execution on the AUT (Application Under Test) when it is deployed or installed in the test environment. RTM facilitates in tracking whether each of the business requirement is covered (i.e., tested) through one or more tests. Thus the quality of the software product (AUT) is tested thoroughly before it is shipped or released to the market. The components of the RTM would be as follows –

Business requirement -> Functional or System Requirements -> Modules -> Test Cases -> Defects (in case of a failed tests)

In organizations where the budget is limited for procuring costly COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software tools such as HPQC, they would create RTM in simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet itself. However, the organizations that have procured HP QC as their test management tool can leverage the built-in feature of the tool to map requirements to test cases to defects.

NOTES

1. The above described documents such as BRD, FRD, and FSD could vary across organizations depending on the standards or processes they have defined for their SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) model. Similarly, the roles Business Analyst/System Analyst could also vary depending on the organization hierarchy laid by the management.
2. It is possible that the relationship between requirements and tests is many to many.

For example: In an Order Management System, the following mapping of requirements to tests is a valid situation.