Coverage and traceability
Coverage is the extent to which items are validated by another item. Typically, a requirement is considered “covered” only if it has corresponding test cases against it and test engineers assigned to it.
Traceability refers to the established connections made between various levels of requirements, risk analysis, designs, and verification. Trace is the item-to-item relationship made to indicate a connection between items, whether for indicating the abstraction of requirement to more detailed levels, mitigation of risk, fulfillment of a requirement by a design, or verification of a requirement. The creation of trace establishes the traceability of information which can be analyzed to assess change impact, determine coverage, and identify gaps.
In industries with rapid change and innovation such as medical device development and automotive manufacturing, an unidentified coverage gap can be risky to end users and costly to remediate. Tracking of coverage with end-to-end traceability helps eliminate these blind spots and ensure quality.
By relating items according to a set of relationship rules, you can assess the impact that changes can have on other items. When you view items in Trace View or use options to analyze item relationships, you can determine if you have the coverage you need.