Empirical Evaluation of Taxonomic Trace Links: A Case Study

2026-04-09

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenges of traceability in software engineering—stemming from fine-grained artifacts, heterogeneity of work products, and ambiguous responsibilities—by proposing Taxonomic Trace Links (TTL) as a complementary mechanism to traditional trace links. TTL leverages domain ontologies and taxonomies, integrated with automated classifiers, to establish early and structured traceability relationships among requirements, business use cases, and test cases. Empirical validation in an industrial case study at Ericsson demonstrates that TTL effectively supports traceability in real-world settings; however, its deployment is constrained by limitations in classifier accuracy and the complexity of ontology construction. The feasibility and applicability boundaries of TTL are rigorously assessed through a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative link evaluation with qualitative feedback from focus groups.

Abstract

Context: Traceability is a key quality attribute of artifacts that are used in knowledge-intensive tasks and supports software engineers in producing higher-quality software. Despite its clear benefits, traceability is often neglected in practice due to challenges such as granularity of traces, lack of a common artifact structure, and unclear responsibility. The Taxonomic Trace Links (TTL) approach connects source and target artifacts through a domain-specific taxonomy, aiming to address these common traceability challenges. Objective: In this study, we empirically evaluate TTL in an industrial setting to identify its strengths and weaknesses for real-world adoption. Method: We conducted a mixed-methods study at Ericsson involving one of its software products. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected across two traceability use cases. We established trace links between 463 business use cases, 64 test cases, and 277 ISO-standard requirements. Additionally, we held three focus group sessions with practitioners. Results: We identified two practically relevant scenarios where traceability is required and evaluated TTL in each. Overall, practitioners found TTL to be a useful solution for one of the scenarios, while less useful for the other. However, developing a domain-specific taxonomy and managing heterogeneous artifact structures were noted as significant challenges. Moreover, the precision of the classifier that is used to create trace links needs to be improved to make the solution practical. Conclusion: TTL is a promising approach that can be adopted in practice and enables traceability use cases. However, TTL is not a replacement for traditional trace links, but rather complements them to enable more traceability use cases and encourage the early creation of trace links.

Problem

• traceability
• Taxonomic Trace Links
• software engineering
• empirical evaluation
• artifact structure

Innovation

• Taxonomic Trace Links
• empirical evaluation
• software traceability
• domain-specific taxonomy
• mixed-methods study