Under the Italian AML Decree gaming accounts may only be loaded through payment instruments ensuring the traceability of financial flows. The...

Improve inventory accuracy and product traceability with PlanIT’s Batch Tracking Inventory Management Software. Monitor every batch from receipt to delivery.

It is structured around quality of life, safety, lifetime responsibility, and trust.

South Africa’s red meat industry enters a new chapter as the 2026–2030 statutory levy cycle takes effect. Administered by RMIS, these funds will pool resources to tackle critical challenges like biosecurity, disease control, and traceability across the value chain.

A requirements traceability matrix (RTM) is a table that links every requirement to the things that come from it and the things that prove it: goals, design, tasks, test cases. Its purpose is to answer two questions at any moment: "why are we building this?" and "has everything we promised been built and checked?" This page gives you a template to copy, a worked example, and a practical way to build one that does not go stale in a month. ## What a traceability matrix is for Requirements change, features get dropped, and tests get written for the wrong thing. A matrix makes those problems visible because every row has to connect in both directions. It helps in four situations: * **A change is proposed.** You can see which designs, tasks and tests it touches before you agree to it. * **Something is cut.** You can see which goals lose coverage. * **Testing starts.** You can see which requirements have no test yet. * **Someone asks why a feature exists.** You can point at the goal it serves. It is not a replacement for the requirements document itself. It is an index across documents, and it is only as good as the IDs underneath it. If your requirements do not have stable IDs yet, start there; the software requirements document template shows how. ## Forward, backward and bidirectional traceability There are three common types, and the difference is the direction you trace. * **Forward traceability** starts at a requirement and follows it to design, build and test. It answers: "is this requirement covered everywhere it should be?" * **Backward traceability** starts at a work item or test and follows it back to a requirement and a goal. It answers: "why does this exist, and is any of it gold plating?" * **Bidirectional traceability** does both, and it is what most teams mean by an RTM. It catches orphans in either direction: a requirement with nothing built, and something built that no requirement asked for. For a small project, a single table that you read both ways is enough. You do not need separate documents for each direction. ## The traceability matrix template One row per requirement. Start with the columns you can keep up to date, and add more only when someone will actually use them. Req ID | Requirement (short) | Source / goal | Priority | Design / diagram | Work item | Test case | Status ---|---|---|---|---|---|---|--- REQ-1 | | | Must / Should / Could | | | | What each column is for: * **Req ID:** a stable identifier that never changes and is never reused, even if the requirement is deleted. * **Requirement (short):** a few words, with the full text living in the requirements document. * **Source / goal:** the business goal or the person who asked for it. This is the column that powers backward tracing. * **Priority:** one scheme, used everywhere. * **Design / diagram:** the screen, flow, diagram or architecture decision that covers it. * **Work item:** the ticket or task identifier. * **Test case:** the test or acceptance check that proves it. Without this column the matrix cannot tell you what is verified. * **Status:** a small set of values the team agrees on, such as not started, in progress, built, verified. ## A short worked example The example is invented, for a customer order portal. Req ID | Requirement (short) | Source / goal | Priority | Design / diagram | Work item | Test case | Status ---|---|---|---|---|---|---|--- REQ-1 | Sign in with company email | G1 fewer support contacts | Must | Flow F1 | TASK-12 | TC-01, TC-02 | Verified REQ-2 | Order list with status and delivery date | G1 fewer support contacts | Must | Screen S2 | TASK-15 | TC-03 | Built REQ-3 | Invoice PDF download | G2 customers find invoices | Should | Screen S3 | TASK-21 | none yet | In progress REQ-4 | Export order history to CSV | requested by one customer | Could | none yet | none yet | none yet | Not started Reading this matrix, you can see three things at once. REQ-3 has no test case yet, so it cannot be called done. REQ-4 traces back to a single customer's request rather than a goal, which is a prompt to ask whether it belongs. And no row connects to a goal that is missing from the table, which tells you the goals are covered. ## How to build one 1. **Give every requirement a stable ID.** Everything else depends on this. 2. **Link each requirement to its source.** A goal, a stakeholder or a document. If it has none, ask why it exists. 3. **Add the design reference** once a screen, flow or decision covers the requirement. 4. **Add work items** as tickets are created. Use the ticket ID, not a description. 5. **Add test cases** and check for empty cells. Every empty cell in the test column is a requirement nobody has verified. 6. **Review gaps on a schedule.** Walk the empty cells before each release. Keep the matrix at the level where it pays off. Tracing hundreds of tiny requirements by hand rarely survives contact with a real project. ## Common mistakes * **Unstable IDs.** If REQ-3 means something different next month, every link is wrong. * **Too many columns.** Each one is a maintenance cost. Add a column only when somebody reads it. * **Built once, never updated.** A stale matrix is worse than none because people trust it. * **Tracing wording instead of intent.** The link is to the requirement, not to a copy of its text. * **No review of empty cells.** The value of the matrix is in the gaps, not in the filled rows. ## Spreadsheet or tool A spreadsheet is a sensible start for a small project: one sheet, filters on status, and a rule that nothing is built without an ID. It strains when requirements change often, because you update links by hand in several places. Tools that store requirements as linked records keep the matrix in step with the work, since the links are the data. Discovery Phase AI, for example, keeps links between requirements and goals, diagrams, decisions and roadmap milestones as part of the discovery document, and its impact check flags which parts of a project a change touches. You can see what such a project looks like in the example report, which uses an invented project. It does not manage test cases, so if you need full test traceability you will still pair it with your test tool. For what to gather before you write requirements at all, see the discovery phase checklist, and for turning requirements into a defined scope, how to scope a software project. The matrix is a small tool with one job: to make sure what you promised, what you built and what you tested are the same thing. Keep it small enough that people keep it true. ## Disclosure and a sample I build Discovery Phase AI, a tool aimed at the writing-and-assembling side of discovery: it drafts the early stages from the decks, documents and call transcripts you already have, and exports one report. Your team still runs the interviews, reviews every draft and makes the decisions. If you just want to see what a finished discovery looks like, here is a complete sample report for an invented field-service app. No signup needed. The original of this post is on our blog. Questions or corrections are welcome in the comments. This post was drafted with AI assistance and edited by a human before publishing.

Japanese chemicals and materials company Asahi Kasei Corporation, together with Dutch software and blockchain company Circularise and Japanese platinum group metals (PGM) refiner Furuya Metal, have launched a joint demonstration project to establish traceability for precious metals used in chlor-alkali electrolysis electrodes. In particular, the companies are evaluating the issuance of digital product passports for precious metals such as iridium and ruthenium.