Note: On-line registration is closed for this course, but registration is still available on-site or by contacting the office at 781-245-5405.

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 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”

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 Courses is Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Course Fee Schedule:

On-line Registration and Payment

Note: On-line registration is closed for this course, but registration is still available on-site or by contacting the office at 781-245-5405.

Copyright © 2004 IEEE Boston Section. All rights reserved.
Maintained by R M Stelting

Updated Thursday June 28, 2007