Software Requirements
(Dv-Best Practices)
by Karl E. Wiegers
350 pages (September 1999)
Microsoft Press; ISBN: 0735606315
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Why is a book on how to create and manage software requirements in Test Focus? It is because poor requirements elicitation, capture and management will most likely result in poor software quality. Some sixty percent of the defects in the average software system can be traced back to the requirements. Understanding the pivotal role of requirements, recognising good requirements and requirements practices, will help testers add even more value as they carry out their day-to-day tasks of verification and validation.
The book is divided into three parts. The author, Karl Wiegers, introduces requirements in Part I of the book. Part II explains the steps necessary to elicit and capture good requirements.
Broadly speaking the steps are:
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Establishing the project's vision and scope.
- Finding and hearing the Customer.
- Documenting the requirements. The use of Data Flow, Entity Relationship, State-Transition, Dialog, and Class models and diagrams is clearly described.
Defining software quality attributes, risk reduction through prototyping, setting requirement priorities, and verifying requirements quality are also addressed in this section of the book.
Part III describes requirements management principles and practices as well as how to manage change requests. Links in the requirements chain are discussed, and lastly, tools that may be used for requirements management are reviewed.
"Software Requirements" makes and easy read. Any persons who wish to make a positive contribution to software development and quality should read this book and refer to it when required to elicit, create, write, or verify software requirements.
Useful templates are provided in the book, and each chapter ends with a section called "next steps" to help the reader put the chapter contents into practice. A case study is explored throughout the book, and effectively used to develop and illustrate the principles and practices around requirements engineering.
I shall be reading this book more than once, to make sure I remember its wisdom and methods. I recommend you do the same.
Wayne Mallinson
What other reviewers say:
I am beginning to believe, judging from reviews, that there are no bad software testing books on the market! This book also has received excellent reviews. Here are a few headings to the customer reviews - they say it all: “Great for Business Analyst and Project Managers”, “ Top choice for selling the concept”, “ Practical, could benefit from more samples”, “ Excellent, comprehensive, and well-written”, “Good for setting up a Requirements Process”.