Testing Requirements: Ensuring Quality Before the Coding Begins

Software that performs well is useless if it ultimately fails to meet user needs and requirements. Requirements errors are the number one cause of software project failures, yet many organizations continue to create requirements specifications that are unclear, ambiguous, and incomplete. What's the problem? All too often, requirements quality gets lost in translation between business people who think in words and software architects and engineers who prefer visual models. Joe Marasco discusses practical approaches for testing requirements to verify that they are as complete, accurate, and precise as possible-a process that requires new, collaborative approaches to requirements definition, communication, and validation. Additionally, Joe explores the challenges of developing "requirements-in-the-large," by involving a broad range of stakeholders-analysts, developers, business executives, and subject matter experts-in a process complicated by continual change.

• Why many common requirements specification techniques fail
• Bridging the gap between requirements written in prose and visual models
• Measures of requirements quality