Many standards specify the kinds of artifacts which need to be produced in order to be compliant. These standards often require traceability of the artifacts. In the earlier task of aligning teams and products to use similar artifacts for engineering, it is also necessary to verify the links required by the standards to which your organization is adhering.

The format in which the links are represented is critical to supporting impact analysis and other activities. After identifying the necessary links between artifacts to support your engineering process, then identify the format of those links. In some cases new integrations may be required to support the traceability. The picture below gives a sample mapping of standards and link formats necessary to support the engineering process.

In the sample picture above there is one place where an integration needs to be created to support an OSLC link. Also, the fictitous “Standard X” requires traceability between several artifacts.

In the final step of this activity the artifacts are mapped into their respective tools, giving some insight to integrations necessary to support PLE.