Use case to source code traceability: The developer navigation viewpoint

Requirements traceability is a challenge for modern software projects where task dependencies and technical expertise are spread across several system developers, multiple abstract model representations such as use cases, and a myriad of code artefacts. This paper presents an approach that monitors the navigation trails left by developers when building code artefacts to realise project use cases. These trails are analysed to generate a relevance ranking of entities that constitute a traceability link. This approach is investigated in a software development scenario through an ordered list visualisation of entities associated with trace links, and by using trace graphs where the size of nodes is determined by their information centrality. Insight from this research suggests that such visualisations can support the answering of traceability related questions.