Requirements Validation

  • Course Length:
    2 days
  • Public Pricing:
    No public classes currently scheduled.
  • Onsite Pricing:
    We offer discount pricing for onsite groups. Please contact us to discuss your specific course requirements, group size, and available training dates.

This course takes you through the steps to ensure that business requirements are validated, that the solution is usable and meets the business needs. Validating requirements improves the likelihood of project success, making sure that we are building the right solution. The cost to correct a software defect may be as high as 2,900 times the cost to correct a requirement. Finding missing requirements and requirements inconsistencies decreases the overall length and cost of the project.

Business analysis and quality assurance professionals must use risk assessments to prioritize requirements and requirements validation activities. The highest risk areas of the business must be addressed first. This course teaches business and quality analysts to design efficient requirements validation tests to make the best use of limited resources and time.

Solution Assessment and Validation is one of the key knowledge areas in the IIBA BABOK® Guide V2.0. This course addresses the solution validation tasks in the knowledge area along with giving business analysts the ability to design efficient and effective tests to demonstrate that the application solutions meets their user’s needs.

This course answers many of the key questions about requirements validation including:

  • How do we validate requirements?
  • Which types of validation and verification processes are appropriate for my project?
  • How does the team ensure that the solution meets the business stakeholder needs?
  • Where does validation fit in the software development life cycle (SDLC)?
  • What is software usability? Why is it important?
  • How does the team correct problems when they are discovered?
  • How do I work with technical members of the solution team? What do they need from a BA to be successful?

Intended Audience

This course is designed for business analysts, quality analysts, project managers, or anyone interested in improving and validating the quality of their requirements.

Prerequisites

We recommend that the Business Analyst has already attended our 4 core courses (or at a minimum Business Process Analysis and Use Case Modeling and Solution Requirements) before enrolling for this course.

Introduction to Requirements Validation

  • What are requirements?
  • Understand the value of acceptance and evaluation criteria
  • How do we validate requirements?
  • When should requirements be validated?
  • Who validates requirements?

1 hour

Validating and Testing Requirements

  • What does it mean to validate requirements?
    • Conducting effective structured walkthroughs of requirements.
      • Review guidelines.
      • Examine a sample review invitation and results form.
      • Review question checklists.
      • How do reviews improve future projects? 
      • Workshop: validate requirements using a formal review
    • Introduction to usability testing.
    • Effective user acceptance testing (UAT).
    • Conduct a post implementation user assessment to identify lessons learned.
  • How to correct problems that are discovered during requirements validation?
    • Use a consistent problem tracking procedure.
    • Track defect/problem types to improve requirements on future projects.
    • Assess each problem for its type, severity, and status.

3 hours

Usability Testing

  • Learn the principles of usability.
  • Learn how usability testing differs from traditional testing.
  • Discuss methods of usability testing.
  • Workshop: Conduct a usability test.

2 hours

Working with IT Stakeholders

  • Communicating with IT development stakeholders.
    • Verifying requirements or specification.
      • Unit testing.
      • Integration testing.
      • Systems testing.
      • Evaluate solution performance - validate non-functional requirements.
      • Validate solution against requirements.
        • Business requirements.
        • Functional requirements.
        • Technical requirements.
      • Regression testing - re-testing after a change.
    • Testing environments.
    • Common IT testing methods.
      • White box and black box testing.
      • Positive and negative testing.
      • Choosing data values for testing.
  • Working with QA stakeholders.
    • Software quality assurance (SQA) planning and structure.
    • Utilizing SQA personnel throughout the SDLC.

3.5 hours

Documenting Requirements Validation Deliverables

  • Designing a requirements validation plan
    • IEEE testing templates.
    • What is a test design, test case, test procedure?
    • Identifying tests from requirements documentation.
    • Using use case descriptions to develop testing procedures.
    • Tracking test cases.
  • Workshop: Validating requirements using test cases.
  • Tracing test cases to requirements - cross checking the solution.
  • Designing a requirements validation plan.
    • Planning considerations:
      • Who will validate requirements?
      • How will this be accomplished?
      • Where are the highest risks?
      • Where will tests be conducted?
      • Who will conduct testing?
      • Who will review test results?
      • What test data will be used?

3.5 hours

Develop Your Action Plan / Course Summary

  • Requirements validation summary.
  • Develop an Action Plan with next steps on the student's current project.
  • Student questions/discussion topics.

1 hour