Continuous Integration and Delivery Traceability in Industry: Needs and Practices

Abstract

The importance of traceability in software development has long been recognized, not only for reasons of legality and certification, but also to enable the development itself. At the same time, organizations are known to struggle to live up to traceability requirements, and there is an identified lack of studies on traceability practices in the industry, not least in the area of tooling and infrastructure. This paper identifies traceability as a key challenge in achieving continuous integration and delivery and documents an industry developed framework — Eiffel — designed to provide real time traceability in continuous integration and delivery. The efficacy of the Eiffel framework is then investigated through comparison with previous traceability methods.