3. Extending traceability: the notion of mappability

Finally, we would like to point out that a strictly "police" and "security" interpretation of traceability paradoxically risks reducing its effectiveness. To manage quality effectively, can we be satisfied with simply keeping track of what we manage? Shouldn't we take a less immediate, broader and more serene view, which consists in understanding these traces and bringing them together into a coherent whole? To answer these two questions, we propose to distinguish between "traceability" and "mappability". To grasp the meaning of these two terms, let us borrow an example from contemporary American literature.