Traceability and Business Rules in Word

A really good LinkedIn question from Adriana Beal on LinkedIn prompted me to write-up a neat little MS Word trick that can be useful for managing requirements traceability or business rules in MS Word.

It lets you create create consolidate of text scattered throughout your word document in a grouped list at the end using the same mechanisms as Tables of Contents, Indexes, and Tables of Figures.

This lets you do things like:

Reference business rules throughout your document and then include them all in

one appendix

Show a list of all Use Cases in your documents

Show a list of which Users, Screens, Systems, or Data Entities are involved in each Use Case

These are the basic steps:

• Create a custom paragraph style in world name it something like "Business Rule"
  
• Every time you reference business rule in your document put it on it's own line and apply this style (In our project we had a special section in each use case for the business rules)
  
• At the end of the document create a custom table of contents that lists all of the Business Rules in your document (Right click table, click edit field code, select field options, and you can then select which word styles show up in your table of contents). The resulting field code looks something like {TOC \f \n \h \z \t "Business Rule,2,Use Case,1"}
  

If you want a sample document that shows how to apply this style I've shared one from drop box: Sample File Download. The major downsides are:

• It's restricted to a single document
  
• You have to be a bit of a word nerd
  

Honestly it's a realy pain, and if you have an options you should use a wiki or a real requirements management tool. This is just a last ditch option to make requirements in word a little more practical.