Traceability
Every result traced to its inputs, every decision to its evidence
Traceability matrices are built for the audit and dead the week after. Change impact is estimated from memory in a meeting. Variants are compared in a slide deck whose numbers nobody can trace to a run. Every vendor calls the fix a digital thread. The question is who maintains it.
The situation
Why the matrix dies
A matrix is a copy of relationships that live somewhere else. The moment a requirement is edited in one tool and the test in another, the copy is wrong, and keeping it right is a job nobody was hired for. Under ISO 26262, IEC 61508 or IEC 62304 that job is mandatory, so it gets done once, before the assessment, and then decays until the next one.
In Ref
The thread as a by-product
When data is stored with what it was made from, the thread exists without a documentation task. Click from a requirement to the runs that verify it, from a run to the parameter set and model version it used, from a result to the decision that closed the question. The matrix is a view of the data, generated when you open it. It is never out of date because it is never maintained.
Change
Impact before the change lands
Know what is affected when something changes: which runs used this model version, which requirements those runs verify, which variants inherit the change. Across teams and across suppliers. When something you rely on moves, you are told. The alternative is the meeting where someone says they think the brake model changed in April.
Variants
Compared with their evidence
Side by side, against the criteria you set, each number linked to the run and the inputs it came from. When a variant loses, the record shows why, and the decision stays attached to the evidence that was on the table. A year later the question why variant C was dropped has an answer that does not depend on who is still in the building.
Audit
What an assessor gets, and what not yet
The chain from requirement to evidence to decision, with who did what and when. What Ref does not provide as of September 2026: sign-off records on a frozen version with name and meaning, and a certificate for the platform itself. If your assessment needs a qualified tool today, this is the wrong page, and the scope page says so at more length.
Limits
What it costs
The thread is only as complete as the data in Ref. Work that happens outside, in a CAD system or on a test rig, enters the thread when its result does, and the record of that result is as good as what you attach. A pilot on one project shows within weeks how much of your thread that covers, and costs nothing in money.
Questions
Asked before every pilot
Does it work with our requirements tool?
Requirements come in and go out as ReqIF. Polarion, DOORS and Jama all speak it.
How fine is the granularity?
Files, models, runs, results, requirements and decisions. Individual lines inside a file are the domain of your editor and your version control.
How long is history kept?
Versions are never deleted during the contract. Reading back a state from two years ago is the normal case.
Can suppliers be part of the thread?
Yes, with their own sign-in and access scoped to what you give them.
Related
If your traceability matrix is rebuilt before every assessment, a pilot on one project costs nothing. Tell us about your project.