Overview:

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 evaluate adequacy of requirements which already have been collected, that they 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.

Audience:

This course has been designed for systems and business managers, project leaders, analysts, programmer analysts, quality/testing professionals, and auditors responsible for assuring the accuracy and completeness of business/customer requirements.

Benefits:

Participants will learn:

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.

Material:

Course materials consist of copies of the slides and a few article reprints.  Instructional format is interactive and includes frequent class exercises. 

Outline:

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 requirements

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”

Speaker’s Bio:

Robin F. Goldsmith, JD is an internationally recognized authority on software development and acquisition methodology and management.  He has more than 30 years of experience in requirements definition, quality and testing, development, project management, and process improvement.  A frequent featured speaker at leading professional conferences and author of the recent Artech House book, Discovering REAL Business Requirements for Software Project Success, he regularly works with and trains business and systems professionals.

Decision (Run/Cancel) Date for this Course is Friday, November 10, 2006

Course Fee Schedule:

On-line Registration and Payment

On-line registration for this course is closed. If you would like to register for this course, you may do so by calling 781-245-5405 or you may register at the Holiday Inn Select, 15 Middlesex Canal Park Road, Woburn, MA on Monday, November 20 between 8:15AM – 8;30AM

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Updated Thursday August 16, 2007