DO-254 traceability pertains to the correlation of individual requirements to the design, implementation, and test elements affiliated with implementing and verifying each DO-254 requirement.
Requirements traceability can be many-to-one, and one-to-many. Requirements traceability needs to be from top-to-bottom (requirements to design to implementation, and requirements to test). This proves that all requirements have corresponding design elements, implementation, and tests. DO-254 Requirements traceability also needs to be bottom-to-top (tests to requirements, implementation to design, and design to requirements). This proves all implementation, design, and test elements are necessary and have requirements which they implement or verify.
DO254 is flexible when it comes to implementing and proving your traceability. You may use manual traceability, semi-automated traceability, or fully automated traceability. There are several 3rd party tool vendors who specifically provide products, and product add-ons, to address the specific needs of DO-254 traceability. These range from inexpensive tailored databases to full-featured requirements and project management tools.Salient features of DO254 traceability tools include:
- Tracing of requirements to design to implementation, and tests.
- Top-to-bottom traceability and bottom-to-top traceability.
- Automation to manage and update traceability changes when the DO-254 documents containing traced items are updated.
- Automated metric analysis to determine traceability percent-complete for managing a DO-254 project
- Automated means of determining orphaned, or un-traced elements, so they can be addressed and become DO-254 compliant