All Eyes on Traceability: An Interview Study on Industry Practices and Eye Tracking Potential

The benefits of traceability have widely been discussed in research. However, studies have also shown that traceability practices are still hardly established in industrial settings due to the high manual effort and lack of tool support. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of using eye tracking to automatically detect trace links to reduce manual effort and thereby increase practical applicability. We conducted an interview study with 20 practitioners to give an overview of traceability practices in industry and how an eye tracking approach would need to be applied in order to be useful. As there is no one-fits-all solution to traceability, and technical limitations of eye tracking still exist, we collected information on used artifact types, tools and requirements management practices to adjust an approach to actual traceability stakeholders' needs. We report on perspectives from different roles in software projects and give an overview of traced artifacts, current traceability purposes and issues, as well as benefits and doubts concerned with using eye tracking to obtain links automatically. We discuss the implications for the implementation of an automatic tracing approach in practice and how eye tracking can support requirements engineering activities.