Improving traceability management through tool integration: An experience in the automotive domain

Despite the relevance of traceability in software processes is well-known, the activities of traceability creation and management are not always adequately supported in real software projects. The lack of integration between the tools adopted in the development processes is one of the main causes of such an ineffective management, where traceability relationships are still manually generated and maintained. In this paper we present an industrial experience we performed for improving the traceability management in a software development process performed in Fiat Chrysler Automobiles FCA company. We designed a software architecture for integrating the existing Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform with the tools used in the testing process. The architecture aimed at fully automating the execution of the testing process and at automatically generating the appropriate traceability links when they are established. It was implemented using a Continuous Integration Engine that allowed us to develop a modular, evolvable and reconfigurable integration architecture. The new architecture was validated by an experiment that showed its capability in correctly and completely generating and handling traceability links between artifacts involved in the testing process. The experiment demonstrated that the integration solution produced also beneficial effects on other quality attributes of the process.