A value-based approach for understanding cost-benefit trade-offs during automated software traceability

Many software development standards mandate establishing trace links among software artifacts such as requirements, architectural elements, or source code. However, for typical real-world systems it is currently too expensive and error prone to generate highly detailed trace links. We previously developed an approach to semi-automatically generate trace links and analyzed cost-benefit trade-offs in this context. We consider it as imperative to include value considerations into planning the generation of trace dependencies. This paper discusses three key trade-off decisions for planning the trace generation process: (a) the level of detail of traces among artifacts; (b) the value of the artifacts that are traced; and (c) the points in time of trace generation (early vs. late). We present cost-benefit considerations, empirical data, and argue for a pragmatic value-based planning approach.