Tracing User Stories and Source Code Using The Language Extended Lexicon

The development of software systems is a complex activity because of the nature of the software and the management of its construction. The software is by essence complex, since it should capture all the particularities of a domain. The development is also complex because many people with different skills and concerns participate to build a unique product that must satisfy the attribute of conceptual integrity. Agile methods like Scrum, help to mitigate these problems using incremental and iterative development. Although new developments can be successful, it could be challenging to be agile after several months. Analysts have to deal with a lot of requirements scattered and tangled across several User Stories written in different Sprints. And developers needs to find the module where certain requirement is implemented. When teams are very volatile and members move around different projects it is even more complex. In this paper, we propose an approach to provide traceability among requirement specification and the source code. Additionally, the approach is supported by a tool that analyses the requirements and the source code to derive the Language Extended Lexicon, a glossary that describes the language of the domain and integrates requirements and source code to provide traceability among them. We have assessed the applicability of our approach by processing an open-source project. We claim that our approach can help on tracing maintenance requirements.