Question

You have been appointed as the Software Quality Assurance Manager for a
project that enables students to access their results on their android phones.

As the person responsible for the overall quality aspects, its your interest to
ensure that strong quality assurance practices are put in place to forestall any
software failure by the end-users.

i. It is important that you conduct requirements validation as part of your
quality assurance practices in this project. Could you explain in your own
words, what is requirements validation and its importance? What is the
impact if this process is not well conducted?

ii. Requirements review is one of the requirements validation techniques
in quality assurance. If you are going to make requirements review, which
method do you prefer to do the activity, formal or informal method?
Explain why you choose the method. Suggest and explain the types of
checks that should be done on the requirements in the software
requirement specification.

b. You are investigating systems requirements for a shipping company. Assume
that you have set up an interview with the manager of the shipping
department. Your objective is to determine how shipping works and what the
information requirements for the new system will be.

Make a list of questions—three (3) open ended and three (3) closed ended—
that you would use. Include four (4) questions or techniques you would use
to ensure you find out about the exceptions.

c. During interviews, why is it important to seek the opinions of the interviewee?

Answer 1

i) Requirements validation is a process by which it is ensured that the customer gets all the requirements that they defined for development. It is performed in the initial stages to check if the project has any errors because if propagated and detected in the later stages, it would require a lot of rework. Different types of checks can performed to detect issues. These checks give out a list of shortcomings based of which a list of fixes is agreed upon. If this validation is not performed the customer could end up getting faulty product or a product that doesn’t fulfil all their requirements.

ii) To carry out the requirements review process in a formal or an informal way would depend upon the complexity of the project and the maturity of the stakeholders. If the stakeholders are very familiar with the process of development the requirements review meeting can be informal as it is not very detailed, if not so, the review process need to be formal where the team can walk the stakeholders through each step with elaborate explainations.

Type of checks :

· Completeness checks: checks the completeness of the project in every sense including all the requirements and constraints covering all the functional and non-functional requirements properly etc.

· Consistency checks: To determine if there are any conflicts between any set of the documented requirements list.

· Validity checks: The functions proposed should be in alignment with what the system needs to perform and no additional functions are required.

· Realism checks: Ensures that the requirements are realistic and can be actually implemented in the given conditions.

· Ambiguity checks: The requirements that have been stated must have only one interpretation.

· Verifiability: Quantifiable measure to ensure up to what extent each requirement is met by the system. Requirements which aren’t quantifiable shouldn’t be listed. For example, there is no measurement for user friendliness, so this requirement should not be listed.