Requirements Traceability and Requirements-Based Testing
Posted on Thu, Aug 04, 2011
Requirements traceability has become a "must have" capability for teams who are building safety-critical or mission-critical applications and need to comply with standards such as DO-178B, FDA, IEC 62304, IEC 61508, ISO/DIS 26262, etc.
Achieving requirements traceability through requirements-based testing provides an objective assessment of which requirements are actually working as expected, and which still require testing. In addition to satisfying compliance mandates, such real-time visibility into true requirement status helps you prevent late-cycle surprises that threaten to derail schedules and budgets.
Eddie Coreia's recent Improve Software Quality with Requirements-Based Testing article provides some great tips for teams looking to start or optimize requirements-based testing. It outlines an eight-step process for test development and execution, and explains how requirements-based testing integrates directly with steps 1, 2, and 6.
- Define Test Completion Criteria
- Design Test Cases
- Build Test Cases
- Execute Tests
- Verify Test Results
- Verify Test Coverage
- Manage and Track Defects
- Manage the Test Library
It also discusses how to perform requirements-based testing in concert with other test and analysis efforts. Parasoft developer Nathan Jakubiak contibuted to this discussion...
“We typically have a set of tasks to implement requirements, and defined test cases that link back to those requirements,” Jakubiak said. At Parasoft, developers (who also serve as testers) break requirements into sets of functionality, and then go to work on test cases. “When we implement requirements, we have to have test cases. Each has to have test cases defined – manual or automated – to run every night, and those are linked back to the requirements. So we can track functions back through requirements.”
The article concludes by discussing how requirements-based testing can help teams build better requirements. To get the details, see the complete Improve Software Quality with Requirements-Based Testing article.