Source, bug and quality traceability
Design and implement source, bug, and quality traceability
Traceability answers: why does this line of code exist, and what proved it works?
The chain
Each hop is a link the platform can create automatically if the preceding one exists. Break any hop and everything downstream is orphaned — which is why the weakest link is nearly always the first, the commit-to-work-item mention.
What each link buys
| Link | Answers |
|---|---|
| Work item → commit | Why was this changed? |
| Commit → build | Which build contains it? |
| Build → test results | What evidence do we have that it works? |
| Build → release | Where is it running? |
Quality traceability specifically
Publishing test results is what turns a build into evidence. A build that passed but published nothing proves only that the process exited zero — and remember the failure mode from Unit 3: without condition: succeededOrFailed(), results vanish exactly when tests fail.
Bug traceability
A bug linked to the commit that introduced it and the commit that fixed it makes patterns visible: which component generates the most defects, whether fixes cluster in rushed releases. Without those links you have a list of bugs, not a signal.
Primary sources