When starting out on a new Umbraco Project it's really important to know and communicate what features and other requirements you have.  

There are many ways of communicating these requirements, but here at Carbon Six Digital, we use a spreadsheet called the Prioritised Requirements and Traceability Matrix.  Long name, but easy idea.

We’ve previously talked about producing a Prioritised Requirements List, which is a crucial first step in commissioning a new Umbraco site.  In this post, we look at the other side of this template, the Traceability Matrix.

The purpose of this side of the template is to track the ongoing development and testing of each of the requirements.  When the Traceability Matrix is properly completed it's possible to trace the life of each requirement through the development process and then through the various elements of the testing process.

We tend to take advantage of the hyperlinking features in Google Sheets so that we link out to the Trello Card where the feature is developed, and when it comes to testing we link out to the various test plans.

Finally, the owner of the requirement is responsible for undertaking User Acceptance Testing which we also track in the Traceability Matrix.

The key benefit of this document is the visibility and control of the requirements throughout the life of the project.  Of course, documentation takes effort, but we feel that the clarity that the traceability matrix adds huge value to our projects.

Next time you commission a new website make sure you contact us to find out more about how we capture and control the requirements of Umbraco projects in a way that keeps things transparent and accessible for all involved.

Lastly, if you’re in the throws of having made bad buying decisions last time you bought an Umbraco Site perhaps because the requirements weren’t well tracked and controlled you might want to consider using our full-site Health Check Service to get things back under control. We carry out a comprehensive review of your cloud-based website’s technical architecture, its hosting and the Umbraco CMS itself as well as any external system integrations. Once this has been completed, we provide you with a detailed report explaining our findings highlighting the urgency of any issues found and the steps needed to improve your Umbraco site.