Maintain references to the origin of problems or issues: Remember who told you about a problem, in which documents you found issues and in what version of the source you identified risks or faults.
Description
(To be done)
Experiences
Some contrary experiences happened when we neglected traceability:
Stakeholder questioned some of our findings - we could not immediately trace those findings back to an original source (i.e. an interview protocol, a particular file/version of source code). These stakeholders immediately suspected all our findings, not only the one or two in question.
Please keep in mind that a lack of traceability, especially for disputed findings or problems, might lead to serious loss of credibility.
On the other hand, maintaining detailed references is a time-consuming task. You easily spend hours with (rather trivial) bookkeeping activities, instead of identifying new and exciting problems.
Applicability
Apply traceability whenever you identify problems or issues
- which might discredit or offend one important stakeholder,
- which seriously impact parts of the underlying organization, company or business unit,
- that carry huge financial, technical or organizational risks or penalties.
Short rule: The more expensive or dangerous, the more traceability you need.