When writing perfect requirements for your product, there is a lot of ground to cover. After you have clearly specified your requirements, you still need to take the all important step of verifying them. A requirement must be stated such that there is a reasonable and cost-effective process by which to ensure the product or system meets the requirement.
Verification allows product managers and developers to tell early on in the development process whether requirements are written well enough to avoid the many pitfalls of poor requirements. Here are six verification approaches that can be incorporated to identify requirements defects before they are significantly more expensive and time-consuming to fix.
1) Explore Innovative Tests
Explore methods such as evaluating testing, analysis, inspection, or demonstration to determine whether each requirement is properly implemented in the product. According to requirements expert Karl Wiegers, “Requirements that are not consistent, feasible, or unambiguous also are not verifiable. Any requirement that says the product shall "support" something is not verifiable.”
2) Ensure Appropriate Characteristics
Review and note that all requirements have the appropriate characteristics: unambiguous, complete, correct, consistent, clear, mandatory. Any unclear language or small errors can be detrimental to the project moving forward.
3) Use a Checklist
Develop and reuse checklists of the most common and damaging requirements defects.
4) Use the Proper Tools
Use simple tools to scan the requirements and identify inherently vague words or phrases. Again, if any portion of the requirements can be understood differently depending on the audience, you will need to clarify those portions.
5) Involve the Entire Team
Include representatives of all major stakeholders on the requirements verification team, as well as members of the architecture and test teams, to verify whether the requirements are feasible and verifiable.
6) Optimize Your Requirements
Authorize the requirements verification team to rework or delete requirements that lack the characteristics of good requirements.
Adding these verification components to your requirements protocol can help detect and eliminate crucial errors early in the development process, savings thousands of dollars in budget and resources.
Our hands-on Requirements Specification Template helps developers write requirements that are fully verifiable. Download it now to ensure you’re catching defects in the early stages of development.
