From the course: Business Analysis Foundations

Testing and verifying the requirements

From the course: Business Analysis Foundations

Testing and verifying the requirements

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- There's a number of times when requirements must be verified. We do this to make sure that we have a clear and complete understanding. The initial verification of the requirements is done through the continued collaboration with stakeholders. This may be part of the initial needs assessment or the review of the situation and solution statements. All of this is done to make sure that the requirements properly represent the needs of the stakeholders, and we're constantly verifying that we have it right. We also need to make sure that we're able to provide the needed detail for those individuals who are going to develop the solutions. This includes making sure that the appropriate detail and acceptance criteria has been gathered for each requirement. When using a predictive approach this verification is often performed as part of a formal review of a requirement specification document. For adaptive approaches this verification is most often done through collaborative conversations and possible modeling activities between the stakeholder, the business analyst, and the implementation team member. Once each requirement's been developed, the result needs to be verified to ensure that it meets the specifications provided. Various levels of testing are usually performed to provide this verification. These procedures and tests are often defined as part of the development methodology of the organization or the project's quality management plan. It's often the role of the business analyst to help plan those testing activities including identifying test scripts and test data. As the tests are conducted the traceability matrix is often used to record the results of the testing activities, as well as often linking the documentation for the test script and data to each requirement. Everybody agrees the testing is important, but it's important to understand how much testing is required. This is often addressed as part of the analysis of what is referred to as the cost of quality. That process reviews the appropriate activities needed to prevent or appraise conformance or non-conformance or failure. We need to remember that the law of diminishing return applies to testing activities. At some point enough is enough.

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