Bi-directional traceability

Mike Kessler
edited July 2016 in
Correct me if I'm wrong - as the last time I discussed this topic with Jama was over a year ago:

In an example project, I would have two item types:
  • Requirement
  • Test Case
The desire would be to have Test Case item types trace to Requirements.  

From what I understand tracing in Jama is uni-directional.  This would mean that:
If a change is made to the Requirement - Link is flagged a suspect
If a change is made to the Test Case - Link is NOT flagged as suspect

From my own quick testing, I have verified that Jama still seems to operate in this manner.  Our industry requires that if we make any change in either item type, that the relationship is flagged as suspect so that it can be further reviewed to understand whether the tracing is still valid.  

The present behavior of the system requires that I have two relationships (one for each direction) in order to achieve my desired functionality.  This seems extraneous to me - as any relationship I would create should follow this behavior (I'm not really sure what the use case is that uni-directional tracing is desired).

Does anyone else have this problem?  I would expect that this is a big problem for anyone adhering to safety critical standards (e.g. ISO-26262/DO-178/IEC 62304)

Kristina King - you had mentioned that the next release will be related to traceability - will this be addressed at all?

Comments

  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    Hi Mike! First off, yes, your understanding is correct. For those following along, this is according to the the user guide:  "Downstream items will become suspect when upstream items are modified."

    So, yes, your problem makes complete sense, and we'll be curious to hear if anyone else is in the same boat (I assume so!).

    We're slowly trickling out more coverage, but it's really starting with the views. (Last weekend's hosted update included additional facets and relating from the list view.) So I'm not sure where we might be taking suspect links. Let me ask around and get back to you.
  • Mike Kessler
    edited June 2016
    Hi Kristina,

    Any update on this?  This is very important to us for our process.

    Thanks
    Mike
  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    Hi Mike,

    At this point raising suspect links on directions other than downstream is not in scope, but the Product team is open to learning more about this need and considering it. I can understand the need for it given life-critical standards.
  • Mike Kessler
    edited June 2016
    Hi Kristina,

    Thanks for the response.  What is the use case where having it be uni-directional as opposed to bi-directional makes sense?  Perhaps we're just misunderstanding how Jama wants us to use this feature.

    Thanks
    Mike
  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    I'm not sure on the answer to this, Mike, but there might have been a narrower use case when we rolled out these features initially. This limitation seems to fit in with the rest of Jama's capabilities, given that the Coverage Explorer only shows downstream relationships.
  • Ian Webb
    edited June 2016
    Hi Mike (& Kristina),

    Our instance of Jama is not very old so we're still figuring out some of these bits of functionality. We did some experiments into 'suspect links' today and were very surprised to find the "only downstream" behaviour that Mike described. As Kristina says, this IS consistent with the documentation but it really does seem to us that suspect links shouold be identified BOTH upstream and downstream of an item that has been modified. We're pretty surprised that this isn't a fairly hot issue for more people!!

    Cheeers,
    Ian
  • Rolland Vandersluis
    edited June 2016
    Couldn't agree more, Ian! Kristina, think of the problems caused when someone changes a downstream (say, derived) requirement and the owner of the upstream requirement is ignorantly blissful... That is, until the design review happens and a bunch of assumptions are made that ran the train off the rails because of a rogue change.
  • Mike Kessler
    edited June 2016
    I had a phone call with Jama staff regarding this topic and I think I was able to convey the use cases where this is of concern.  From what I took away from the conversation, Jama has plans to address this in the future, however there was no concrete date that this would be achieved.
  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    Ian and Dutch, thanks for chiming in here. As you can probably glean from Mike's comment, this is something that he has been requesting for a very long time, so it's on our radar. (But why it's not a hot issue to many others is a puzzle to me too, given how life-critical it could be!)
     
    We're finishing up work on a new coverage view that shows upstream relationships, and from there I think it's only natural to then consider what ACTIONS should be considered. I'll check in on this at our next meeting.