Contour’s cross project linking allows a project to reference a requirement in a separate project.
Several clients had requested the ability to link requirements (or any items for that matter) across different projects. During analysis we realized that there were several possible implementations.
One option was to completely link an item from one project into another, such that every attribute exists within the original item. This posed a few problems. Namely that attributes on a requirement (status, priority, assigned to, release, custom, etc) differ from project to project. This problem is especially glaring when considering a project release. One projects release is potentially meaningless to another project. All that is really required is the core of the item being linked, like the requirement description, in the case of a traditional requirement.
This lead us to option 2. Say we have ProjectA and ProjectB. We could create within ProjectB its own item that references, or contains within it, a kind of a proxy to the item in ProjectA. This enables two things. One is that we now have a reference in ProjectB to an actual item in ProjectA, such that, the original item is still owned and managed by ProjectA. While ProjectB has it’s own attributes surrounding this reference. ProjectB can now manage this item under it’s own configuration and process. This is the approach we took when we implemented what we call “Cross project linkingâ€. The image below shows an example of an item in ProjectB that has, or references, an item that exists in ProjectA.
There was a third option that is worth mentioning. Utilizing Contours traceability feature, it would be possible to create a trace relationship to an item in a separate project. It’s clean because it allows you to link across projects without having to create new items in each project. However, there are advantages to having an item that can be tracked and managed independently within each project. In the end we have implemented option two but will be looking for solutions around cross project traceability that may coincide.