6 DR 20230823

keywords: search, references-list

What is the references list good for?

The references list is needed to keep track of the phase a requirement is in. Reference counts are used to provide more granularity about the implementation state of a requirement.

It was decided to store references lists in the wiki to be visible to all that have access to the wiki. In addition, every requirement has its own list, to directly see the phase a requirement is in.

Structure of the references list

Why multiple entries?

It was chosen to use a references list, because a system/project may support different version lines, and requirements may differ between those version lines.

An alternative would have been to create full wiki-branches that are kept in sync with code-branches. However, this creates more effort when changing requirements affecting all branches, because they must be updated in all wiki-branches. With the assumption that only few requirements are specific to version lines, and as consequence specific to branches, this alternative seemed infeasible.

Why only branches?

The references list only contains branch counts, because a list entry for every release would make the list unreadable after a few months with tens of releases.

As a better alternative for releases, mantra should allow creating release-reports that contain all active requirements for the release.

Why do counts propagate to higher-level requirements?

High-level requirements most often affect a wider area in a system/project. This makes it hard to add traces for them in the implementation and tests. However, it is reasonable to assume that a high-level requirement is at least partially implemented if at least one sub-requirement is traced. Therefore, reference counts of sub-requirements are added to the reference count of the high-level requirement, because a requirement is considered active if it has at least one reference in the implementation or tests.