TY - GEN

T1 - All Eyes on Traceability

T2 - 31st IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, RE 2023

AU - Ahrens, Maike

AU - Nagel, Lukas

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft (DFG) under Grant No.: 500462081, project TraceSEC.We thank all participants for taking the time to take part in our interview study and for all the valuable insights.

PY - 2023/9

Y1 - 2023/9

N2 - The benefits of traceability have widely been discussed in research. However, studies have also shown that traceability practices are still hardly established in industrial settings due to the high manual effort and lack of tool support. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of using eye tracking to automatically detect trace links to reduce manual effort and thereby increase practical applicability. We conducted an interview study with 20 practitioners to give an overview of traceability practices in industry and how an eye tracking approach would need to be applied in order to be useful. As there is no one-fits-all solution to traceability, and technical limitations of eye tracking still exist, we collected information on used artifact types, tools and requirements management practices to adjust an approach to actual traceability stakeholders' needs. We report on perspectives from different roles in software projects and give an overview of traced artifacts, current traceability purposes and issues, as well as benefits and doubts concerned with using eye tracking to obtain links automatically. We discuss the implications for the implementation of an automatic tracing approach in practice and how eye tracking can support requirements engineering activities.

AB - The benefits of traceability have widely been discussed in research. However, studies have also shown that traceability practices are still hardly established in industrial settings due to the high manual effort and lack of tool support. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of using eye tracking to automatically detect trace links to reduce manual effort and thereby increase practical applicability. We conducted an interview study with 20 practitioners to give an overview of traceability practices in industry and how an eye tracking approach would need to be applied in order to be useful. As there is no one-fits-all solution to traceability, and technical limitations of eye tracking still exist, we collected information on used artifact types, tools and requirements management practices to adjust an approach to actual traceability stakeholders' needs. We report on perspectives from different roles in software projects and give an overview of traced artifacts, current traceability purposes and issues, as well as benefits and doubts concerned with using eye tracking to obtain links automatically. We discuss the implications for the implementation of an automatic tracing approach in practice and how eye tracking can support requirements engineering activities.

KW - automatic approach

KW - empirical research

KW - eye tracking

KW - interview study

KW - requirements traceability

KW - trace links

KW - tracing

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85174419620&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1109/RE57278.2023.00017

DO - 10.1109/RE57278.2023.00017

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:85174419620

T3 - Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering

SP - 77

EP - 88

BT - Proceedings - 31st IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, RE 2023

A2 - Schneider, Kurt

A2 - Dalpiaz, Fabiano

A2 - Horkoff, Jennifer

PB - IEEE Computer Society

Y2 - 4 September 2023 through 8 September 2023

ER -