Requirement Management in Testing
Anindita Sarkar Project Manager

Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore
Abstract:

This paper discusses the issues we have faced in our testing projects in managing requirements, test cases, test conditions and how we have resolved them. It also discusses the status reporting for a testing project from the requirements perspective. For the sake of completeness this paper also discusses some aspects of the requirements change management process.

Introduction
Every software project arises out of a business problem. Requirements gathering and analysis try to identify the business problem to be solved and probable characteristic a software product needs to have as a solution to the business problem.

Requirements are the foundation stone on which a software product is built. Gathering and managing requirements is one of the biggest challenges a project manager faces in a project. Robust requirement management process is one of the stepping-stones of success of a project.

This paper discusses the issues we have faced in gathering; analyzing and testing these requirements and the workarounds we have taken to overcome those issues.

Gathering Requirements
Requirement gathering process can differ from project to project based on their nature, platform and technology. Testing teams will need to take care of the following aspects while gathering requirements for any kind of testing

Testability One of the major challenges we have faced during requirements gathering is the testability of a requirement. Very often customers come up with requirements that are not testable. To determine the testability of a requirement following questions can be asked • Can we define the acceptance criteria for this requirement? If the answer is no then this requirement is not testable. • Clearly state the assumption you have made on this requirement. Check if the assumption is conflicting with any other assumption/requirement made so far.