Poorly defined requirements cause up to two-thirds of software errors, yet few organizations know effective methods to assure requirements are accurate and complete. At most, they use one or two weak methods and don’t recognize the weakness. This interactive session introduces 21 methods with increasing power. Following the CAT-Scan Approach?, participants apply the techniques successively to a real case and discover how each different method reveals additional, otherwise-overlooked defects when they are easiest and least expensive to fix. Participants learn ways to find previously overlooked requirements, increase meaningful customer/user involvement, enhance communications and understanding, and truly test the adequacy of requirements definitions.
This course shows ways to test that requirements which already have been
collected are accurate, clear, and complete. The course is not describing
how to test that the delivered software meets the requirements.
Nor is it intended to teach how to discover requirements, although the testing
methods do suggest methods which would help discovery. Our companion course,
Defining and Managing User Requirements, does concentrate on teaching how
to discover, analyze, and document requirements.
VALUE OF TESTING UP-FRONT
Overcoming obstacles to improvement
Role of requirements in system problems
Big economic payoff of better requirements
Proactive Testing? Life Cycle Model
Survey on improving requirements quality
Keys to effective testing
Why up-front testing usually is so weak
CAT-Scan Approach? secret to quality
TESTING REQUIREMENTS FORMATS
The “Regular Way” we review requirements
Hidden weaknesses of traditional methods
Adding strength to subjective evaluations
Formal technical review
Inspection topics and standards
Making sure they are requirements
Assessing reviewability
Determining deliverability
Demonstrating testability
Testing structural completeness and clarity
Format for requirements deliverables
FINDING OVERLOOKED REQUIREMENTS
What we mean by system quality
Identifying all the stakeholders
Detecting all three Quality Dimensions
Design, Performance, Conformance needed
Addressing relevant quality factors
Candidate quality factor requiremements
Commonly overlooked deliverables
ASSURING ACCURACY/COMPLETENESS
Checking importance and criticality
Finding Engineered Deliverable Quality?
Guidelines and conventions vs. IT standards
Engineering standards to do a job well
Ascertaining trade-off balances
Simulation and prototyping
Walking through requirements
Joint Application Development (JAD)
Defining acceptance criteria
Matching to independent definitions
Independent/expert validation
Measuring the "proof of the pudding"
* More than 21 ways to test that business/user requirements are accurate and
complete.
* Finding previously overlooked problems when they are easiest and least expensive
to fix.
* Recognizing, communicating, and gaining commitment to the importance of
adequate requirements.
* Evaluating the levels of quality embodied within the requirements.
* Testing techniques that enhance customers' involvement and communication
with management.
* Allocating testing resources economically.