On Human Analyst Performance in Assisted Requirements Tracing: Statistical Analysis Alex Dekhtyar∗, Olga Dekhtyar†, Jeff Holden∗, Jane Huffman Hayes‡, David Cuddeback∗, and Wei-Keat Kong‡ ∗ Department of Computer Science, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA Email: {dekhtyar, jholden}@calpoly.edu,
[email protected] †Department of Statistics, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA. Email:
[email protected] ‡Department of Computer Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA. Email:
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[email protected] Abstract—Assisted requirements tracing is a process in what tests to rerun. With all the advantages that tracing could which a human analyst validates candidate traces produced offer to NDFC, why are they not using such a tool/process? by an automated requirements tracing method or tool. The First, many organizations undertake manual tracing, per- assisted requirements tracing process splits the difference between the commonly applied time-consuming, tedious, and haps with the assistance of a word processing tool or error-prone manual tracing and the automated requirements spreadsheet. Such a process is boring, tedious, and time- tracing procedures that are a focal point of academic studies. consuming. As a result, it is also error prone [11]. Second, In fact, in software assurance scenarios, assisted requirements once traceability is established for a project, the project arti- tracing is the only way in which tracing can be at least partially facts quickly change, thus necessitating traceability updates. automated. In this paper, we present the results of an extensive 12 month study of assisted tracing, conducted using three Third, there is a lack of an industry-accepted tracing tool.