Traceability, Change and Quality – Chapters Requirements Text Steve Chenoweth & Chandan Rupakheti RHIT Question 1

Traceability: Primary Questions Why is tracing important? Why we care – remember this triangle? Question 2

Traceability: The Problem How do you know, if you’re at one of these later stages, that you have a requirements fault?

In general, how to trace… Use Traceability matrices

Tracing User Needs to Features Feature 1Feature 2...Feature n Need 1X Need 2X …XX Need mX

Tracing Features to Use Cases Use Case 1 Use Case 2...Use Case n Feature 1X Feature 2X …XX Feature 3X

Tracing Requirements to Implementation

Tool Support Spreadsheets ◦ Maintaining and updating the links is difficult Relational Databases Requirements Management Software Question 3

Factors for Change External Internal Unofficial sources contributed up to half of the total scope of the project Question 4

Managing Change: Primary Questions How do you capture change requests? How do you respond to these (individually & overall)? How does this tie-in with tracing requirements ?

A Process for Managing Change Step 1: Recognize that change is inevitable, and plan for it

A Process for Managing Change Step 2: Baseline the requirements ◦ This means they are signed-off on, and ◦ From then on, they fall under change control – see below Step 3: Establish a single channel to control change –No ad hoc additions –No ad hoc fixes, either

A Process for Managing Change In  this big picture, you especially need to know what “release management”  is! Step 4: Use a Change Control System to Capture Changes Step 5: Manage Change Hierarchically Question 5

Follow the link There is a dependency between the various artifacts involved in requirements mgmt Follow the chain and make sure that the change is propagated

Products vs. Processes Organizations that produce high-quality products invest in high-quality processes. Product quality can be measured through testing. How can we measure process quality?

Review Methods Informal ◦ Ask a peer to read and give comments Formal ◦ Ask a peer to prepare for review ◦ Record and report results of review Active ◦ Interrogate reviewer Start Question 6

Checklists Look for anticipated defects Some defects apply to almost all artifacts ◦ Does the artifact exist? Some defects are artifact-specific ◦ Have you identified all stakeholders? End Question 6

Problem Statement Checklist 1. Has a problem statement been drafted? 2. Is it written in an easy-to-understand way? 3. Does the team understand it? 4. Has it been circulated for agreement to the key stakeholders, including management? 5. Do the team members have agreement that this is the problem they are trying to solve?

Supplementary Specification Checklist (1/2) 1. Have you established an appropriate template? 2. Are all functional requirements not specified by use cases included in the supplementary specification? 3. Have requirements for usability, reliability, performance and supportability been captured?

Supplementary Specification Checklist (2/2) 4. Have design constraints been identified? 5. Have supplementary requirements been linked to use cases where appropriate?

Extra Credit Find two web based requirements management software tools (by searching on the Internet, etc.), and briefly describe the features they support. How are requirements captured in the agile and extreme methodologies? Read Chapter 30 and write a report. Submit using Moodle (Lessons – Extra Credit – Week 6)