28 Questions
What is the main objective of requirements validation?
To identify the intended system capabilities and properties
What is the primary difference between validation and verification?
Validation focuses on correctness, while verification focuses on quality
What is the purpose of informal peer reviews?
To educate other people about the product and collect unstructured feedback
What is a limitation of informal peer reviews?
They are all of the above
What is the primary benefit of reviewing requirements?
To identify requirements problems and inconsistencies
When does validation occur in the requirements development process?
Throughout the iterative elicitation, analysis, and specification processes
What is the first step in the inspection process?
Author and moderator plan together
What percentage of defects are typically found during the inspection stage?
75%
What is the purpose of the follow-up stage?
To verify that all open issues have been resolved
What happens if major revisions are necessary?
The team elects to re-examine portions of the product
What is the primary goal of the inspection process?
To satisfy the inspection exit criteria
What is the final outcome of the inspection process?
The document is accepted as is
What is the main purpose of requirements validation?
To determine whether the product satisfies customer needs
What is verification in RE?
Determining if the product meets its requirements
What is the difference between validation and verification?
Validation is for building the right product, verification is for building the product right
When should requirements validation and verification be performed?
At every stage during RE
What do validation and verification relate to?
Quality assurance
What is the purpose of elicitation in validation?
To trace back to business objectives
What is the purpose of a formal requirements review?
To produce a report that identifies the material examined and the reviewers
What type of formal peer review is well-established at IBM?
Inspection
What is the benefit of inspections in terms of labor hours?
Saves 10 hours of labor hours for every hour invested
What is the role of a tester in an inspection?
To catch defective requirements
Why is it important to have all necessary people in an inspection meeting?
To avoid correcting issues only to find out later that someone important disagrees
What is the role of the moderator in an inspection?
To use the entry criteria as a checklist before deciding to proceed
What is one of the entry criteria for an inspection?
The document has no obvious spelling or grammatical issues
What is the purpose of the recorder in an inspection?
To capture defects found in an action item list
How long should an inspection stage typically last?
Less than 2 hours
What is the purpose of inspection participants?
To provide different perspectives on the document
Study Notes
Requirements Validation and Verification
- Ensures that the requirements are correct, demonstrate the desired quality characteristics, and will satisfy customer needs
- Both validation and verification are complementary processes related to the concepts of quality assurance
- Validation assesses whether a product satisfies customer needs (doing the right thing)
- Verification determines whether the product of some development activity meets its requirements (doing the thing right)
Requirements Validation vs. Verification
- Validation: "Are we building the right product?" - assessing whether you have written the right requirements
- Verification: "Are we building the product right?" - determining whether the product meets its requirements
Requirements Validation and Verification Processes
- Need to be performed at every stage during RE: Elicitation, Analysis, Specification
- Involves checking back with the elicitation sources, checking the correctness and consistency of the requirements, and checking conformity to writing standards, rules, etc.
What are We Validating?
- Requirements accurately describe the intended system capabilities and properties that will satisfy the various stakeholders' needs
- Requirements are correctly derived from business requirements, system requirements, business rules, and other sources
- Requirements are complete, feasible, and verifiable
- All requirements are necessary, and the entire set is sufficient to meet the business objectives
- All requirement representations are consistent with each other
Validation Techniques
- Reviews
- Prototyping
- Testing
Reviews
- Anytime someone other than the author of a work product examines the product for problems, a peer review is taking place
- Reviewing requirements is a powerful technique for identifying requirements problems
Informal Peer Reviews
- Useful for educating other people about the product and collecting unstructured feedback
- Not systematic, thorough, or performed in a consistent way
- Approaches include:
- Peer deskcheck
- Passaround
- Walkthrough
Formal Peer Reviews
- Follow a well-defined process
- Produce a report that identifies the material examined, the reviewers, the review team's judgment as to whether the requirements are acceptable, and a summary of the defects found and the issues raised during the review
- Best-established type of formal peer review is called an inspection
Inspections
- Developed by Michael Fagan at IBM
- A well-defined multistage process that involves a small team of participants who carefully examine a work product for defects and improvement opportunities
- Serve as a quality gate through which project deliverables must pass before they are baselined
- Can be used for inspecting requirements documents and software
Inspection Participants
- Author of the work product
- Tester
- Project Manager
- People responsible for interfacing systems that will be affected by the item being inspected
- People who are the sources of information that into the item being inspected
- People who will do work based on the item being inspected
Inspection Roles
- Author
- Moderator
- Reader
- Recorder
Inspection – Entry Criteria
- Document conforms to the standard template and doesn't have obvious spelling, grammatical, or formatting issues
- Line numbers or other unique identifiers are printed on the document to facilitate referring to specific locations
- All open issues are marked as TBD (to be determined) or accessible in an issue-tracking tool
- Moderator didn't find more than three major defects in a ten-minute examination of a representative sample of the document
Inspection Stages
- Reader leads inspector through document, describing one requirement at a time in their own words
- Inspector brings up possible defects
- Recorder captures them in action item list for the author
- Team decides whether to Accept document as is, Accept w/ minor revisions, or Major revision needed
Inspection – Exit Criteria
- All issues raised during the inspection have been addressed
- Any changes made in the requirements and related work products were made correctly
- All open issues have been resolved, or each open issue's resolution process, target date, and owner have been documented
Learn about the importance of validation and verification in requirements engineering, and how they differ in ensuring customer needs are met.
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