Linking to development, design, test, and requirement artifacts

You can use the IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) product integration and other OSLC lifecycle integrations to create traceability links to new and existing artifacts in other products.

You can link from collections, modules, saved module views, and other individual requirements artifacts to development, models and designs, and test artifacts.

You can link requirements artifacts to requirements in IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® (DOORS) modules and in other Requirements Management (RM) applications. After creating links, you can display a summary of the linked artifact or navigate to the artifact. You can also add a widget to your dashboard to monitor the status of linked artifacts.

Tip: You can also create links by dragging an artifact and dropping it on the link icon of another artifact, as shown here:

Before you begin

The product integration must be configured before you can perform this task.

For more information about integrating with ELM applications on the same Jazz® Team Server, see Registering applications with the Jazz Team Server and Administering lifecycle projects.
To integrate with applications on other Jazz Team Servers, see Integrating products on separate Jazz Team Servers.
To integrate with DOORS, see this topic.
As of version 7.0.0, Design Management (DM) is no longer part of ELM. You can use the extension for Change and Configuration Management (CCM) application. For more details, see Overview of Rhapsody Model Manager.

About this task

As you link collections, modules, and individual artifacts to development and test artifacts, the link types define the traceability relationships. In ELM, requirement artifacts are located in the RM application, development artifacts are located in the Change and Configuration Management (CCM) application, and test artifacts are located in the Quality Management (QM) application. The traceability relationships between RM and the other applications are described in the following graphic.

Represents how requirements are implemented by development artifacts, associated with designs, and validated by test artifacts.

Typically, groups of requirements are organized in collections or modules for review, approval, and management purposes. For example, the high-level requirements that constitute the project vision are often grouped in a single collection or module. The requirements analyst, project manager, or development manager links the collection or module to a development plan in the CCM application. The development manager can generate plan items from the each of the requirements in this collection or module. The test manager links the same collection or module to the test plan for the project. The test manager can generate high-level test cases from the each of the requirements in this collection or module.

High-level requirements are then elaborated by detailed requirements and associated artifacts, such as business process diagrams, use cases, user interface sketches. Detailed requirements can be grouped in collections or modules, and linked to the development plan and test plan. Plan items and test cases can be generated for each artifact in the linked collection or module. Individual requirements and artifacts can also be linked directly to work items, test cases, software and systems models and designs.

You can also create links between RM application artifacts and objects in external RM applications, such as DOORS or other installations of RM applications in ELM, to reference related requirement artifacts in both tools.

For a chart of all cross-application linking types for the RM application, see Links across OSLC domains.

What to do next

To add a widget to your project dashboard to monitor the status of the ELM links, see Project dashboards.