Suspect traceability in Quality Management artifacts

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Suspect traceability indicates the potential impact of changes to linked artifacts. In the Quality Management application, you can discover how changes in linked requirements affect test cases.

Links between artifacts in a project, or between projects across the lifecycle, represent important traceability relationships and dependencies. Stakeholders must be aware of any change that can affect related artifacts. With suspect traceability, linked artifacts are marked with indicators to show that the artifacts might be affected by changes. Team members might need to modify one or more artifacts to ensure that the linked artifacts maintain logical consistency and satisfy the meaning of the link.

Note: Suspect traceability is not currently supported in projects that have configuration management enabled. In projects that are enabled for configuration management, use the link validity feature to see how linked artifacts are affected by changes. To understand the differences between suspect traceability and link validity, see this topic.

Suspect status indication

You can view the suspect status for test cases in various contexts and access the affected artifacts. You can remove the suspect status if you determine that the changes to associated requirements are not significant, or when adjustments were already made in the test cases to accommodate the change and to restore consistency.

You can view the suspect status of a test case in the following locations:
  • Test case editor information bar

    When you open a test case, if the test case is suspect, the information bar displays this message: The Test Case is currently in Suspect status.

  • Suspect column in test case list views

    Each cell in the Suspect column displays a status icon, either Suspect (Suspect) or Not Suspect (Request non-suspect). The Suspect column is available in the following list views:

    • Browse test cases

      When you browse for test cases (click Construction > Browse > Test Cases), the list view displays the Suspect column by default. A status icon shows whether test cases in the list have a suspect status.

    • Test plan, Test Cases section

      Similar to the browse test cases list view, the Test Cases section of a test plan displays the Suspect column to indicate the suspect status for associated test cases.

Suspect traceability

Suspect traceability enables you to view which linked artifacts contributed a suspect status. Linked requirements can be identified as contributors to a suspect status either automatically, during a reconcile requirements operation, or manually, by changing the suspect status in a test case. In the Quality Management application, you can view suspect traceability information in the following locations:
  • Suspect Contributors section

    Located on the right side of a test case in the Additional Information panel, this section displays a list of linked requirements that contributed a suspect status to the test case.

  • Suspect Contributor and Suspect Contributors column

    You can view suspect requirements information in the following list views:

    • Browse test cases list view

      The Suspect Contributors column displays all requirements that contributed a suspect status for each listed test case. You can add this read-only column to the test cases list view by clicking the Change Column Display Settings icon.

    • Test case editor, Requirement Links section
      The Requirement Links section displays a list of linked requirements. The Suspect Contributor column indicates which of the linked requirements contributes a suspect status to the test case. In the Suspect Contributor field, when you click the Edit icon, you can set the value in the field to either Yes or No.
      A test case that shows the Requirement Links section. In the table, a cell of the Suspect Contributor column is selected and the Not Suspect and Suspect options are shown in the drop-down menu.

    You can click the Edit icon next to the status icon to change the suspect status. When one or more linked requirements are set as Suspect, the test case is automatically marked as suspect. When all the requirements are marked as Not Suspect, the test case is automatically marked as cleared. You can bulk update the suspect state for requirements by selecting multiple requirements and then choosing the Suspect or Not Suspect status in a single action.

Filtering test cases by using the Suspect Contributors column

In the test case list view, you can filter test cases by the two values in the Suspect Contributors column:

  • Has Requirement Link
  • Does Not Have Requirement Link
The filter is shown with Suspect Contributors column options.

If you filter by Has Requirement Link, the table shows all the test case rows that have requirement links in Suspect Contributors column. If you filter by Does Not Have Requirement Link, the table shows all the test case rows that do not have any requirement links in the Suspect Contributors column.