Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 7, numbers 3 and 4, 2014 // View article

Reuse-Based Test Traceability: Automatic Linking of Test Cases and Requirements

Authors:
Thomas Noack
Steffen Helke
Thomas Karbe

Keywords: Reuse; Requirements; Test cases; Traceability

Abstract:
Safety standards demand full requirement traceability, which includes a complete tracing between requirements and test cases to stipulate how a requirement has to be verified. However, implementing such a concept rigorously is time-consuming and costly. Furthermore, in the automotive industry this cost is repeatedly incurred for each vehicle series, because in contrast to other development artefacts, reuse strategies for trace links have not yet been sufficiently researched. This paper presents the novel approach of Reuse-based Test Traceability, which allows for a more cost-effective implementation of trace links in certain cases. First, we identify and formalize a scenario, the so called RT-Problem, for reusing trace links between test cases and reused requirements, which has been observed in industry practice. Next, based on this formalization we propose a 3-layered method, which automatically creates links between test cases and reused requirements. For reasons of practicality, we focus on the first layer, which represents a transitive test-link reuse. Finally, we present the results of two field studies demonstrating that our approach is feasible in practice. As the main contribution of this work we show that the automated reuse of test cases on the basis of reused requirements is both possible and useful.

Pages: 469 to 485

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2014. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 30, 2014

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2628