The Four Cs and One T of Requirements “Testing”

It is important to know that written requirements are good, but few employ a practical, repeatable approach for “testing” their requirements. Evgeny Tkachenko says his company has introduced a requirements analysis step which is done before coding of functionality begins. Checking for requirements completeness, clearness, correctness, consistency, and testability helps ensure that developers create the right features the first time. To demonstrate this process, Evgeny presents examples of buggy requirements and plays games with participants who solve logic puzzles to practice finding inconsistencies in requirements. He describes a set of guidelines for requirements analysis—having an analytical mindset, asking questions of product owners, tracing requirements to tests, paying attention to non-specific wording, using heuristics, and being guided by common sense and experience. Whether your team captures requirements in user stories or traditional formats, join Evgeny for new insights, tools, and practices to improve your requirements.