How to tell if your Requirements Traceability Matrix is useless

Your testing is in trouble when:

Your Requirements Traceability Matrix looks like this:

The system must do XYZ ---> Test XYZ: Pass

The system must do ABC ---> Test ABC: Pass

The system must do 123 ---> Test 123: Pass

Even worse, there is a 1-to-1 match between the test case and a requirement.

You should have already seen each feature requirement "work" at the Sprint Demo. The Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) would have provided no additional information to the team because the matrix doesn't explain how the tester evaluated the requirements.

What's the most testing vital question to answer for a development manager or leadership?

Are we confident that we found the important bugs that are going to cause us a problem? Unfortunately, the RTM does not answer that question.

Hopefully, your tester is good at finding bugs, and the RTM is just overhead paperwork.

A tester needs to tell a story about why they have confidence in the software quality.

What are other ways to tell that story?

One possible alternative is branding. If your testing organization can build up brand recognition for finding the important bugs, you can use the organization's seal of approval in place of an RTM.

Another possible alternative is to highlight a story about covering a high-risk area. For example, if performance was a concern, you can show a graph and write a short paragraph about the evaluation.