User Guide / Requirements & Traceability

Requirements & Traceability

Requirements capture what needs to be built. Linking them to test cases is what turns "we think this is covered" into a real, checkable answer.

Business vs. Functional requirements

A Business Requirement is a top-level need ("Users can reset a forgotten password"). A Functional Requirement is a child of one, breaking it into something more concrete to test against ("The reset link expires after 30 minutes"). You'll see this reflected as a small hierarchy on the Requirements list.

Each requirement carries a priority (Low/Medium/High/Critical) and moves through a status lifecycle as work on it progresses:

Draft Approved In Development Testing Done

Linking test cases to a requirement

A requirement isn't really "covered" until at least one test case is linked to it. There are two ways to create that link:

  1. From the test case — the Test Case create/edit form has a requirement picker.
  2. From the requirement — open any Requirement's detail page, scroll to Test Coverage, and use the Link Test Cases picker. It's a multi-select, so you can attach several existing test cases at once, and each linked case shows a Remove action if you need to undo it.

The Traceability Matrix

Reached from its own link in the sidebar (it's cross-project, unlike most of this guide's other pages), the matrix is a filterable grid of every requirement you can see, its project and release, and whether it's Covered or Uncovered — filter by project, release, or coverage status to narrow it down.

The reverse gap matters too: a test case with no requirement behind it might be testing something nobody asked for, or might just not be linked up yet. The matrix page has an Orphan Test Cases panel — collapsed by default — listing every test case in scope that isn't linked to any requirement.

Who can do this: creating, editing, and linking requirements follows the same permission — roles that can edit requirements in a project can also link or unlink its test cases. Most roles can at least view requirements and the matrix.

Next: Test Design →