Testing Techniques for Tracing and Validating Requirements

Quality is the major business differentiator in IT. Studies such as the Chaos Report show that the most common cause of low quality is having poor, or poorly understood, requirements. Other common causes are poor design, code, and installation.

While prevention of defects is the best cure, identifying and fixing defects as early as possible is key, and some of the responsibility for doing that falls on the business analyst (BA). This course, therefore, concentrates on the validation techniques for:

• Requirements
• The system at the business level (functional and usability testing)
• Acceptance
• Business purpose (stakeholder satisfaction with the production product)

You cannot underestimate the importance of testing. To ensure project success, planning and executing the testing process must begin as soon as the vision and scope for the solution takes shape. As the requirements for the solution are elicited, the business analyst and the test team develop and refine a master test plan. This plan incorporates test strategies to identify any defects in the requirements, solution or corresponding documentation.

In this course you will learn the importance of achieving quality and your role in doing so. You will learn which project and product factors affect the two components of risk (likelihood and impact), and you?ll learn to apply those to various real-life validation situations using a case study and practice testing decision-making. You will learn techniques for:

• Validating requirements or any text-based product (such as procedures or plans)
• Testing functional and manual requirements
• Assessing and testing usability

You will learn to plan functional and usability testing at the business level and the essential elements to document that planning. You?ll examine your role in Acceptance, including Acceptance of an outsourced product, and you?ll determine how to assess stakeholder satisfaction with the product in production.

Since there is never enough time, even theoretically, to validate all details of a product, an important concept is using risk assessment to determine the appropriate thoroughness of validation at every stage.

Exercises in risk assessment and all the major validation techniques are an integral part of this course.

While the involvement of BAs in testing varies widely across companies, this course assumes maximum involvement at the business level (excluding non-functional testing except for usability).

In this hands-on workshop, you?ll develop a master test plan. You will also perform exercises designed to help you establish a risk-based and comprehensive master test strategy for a testing effort. These activities help the business analyst ensure that all requirements trace back to the business need.

By attending this course, you?ll develop the competencies required to create test cases and scenarios and to ensure proper test coverage according to the risk level. You will also learn about the different levels and types of testing commonly used in solution development today.