Requirements-Based Testing: Encourage Collaboration Through Traceability

It is a well-documented fact that incomplete, poorly written or poorly communicated requirements are responsible for 50 to 70 percent of software project failures. Indeed, industry research shows that the root cause of 56 percent of all errors identified in projects are introduced in the requirements phase.

As a result, many organizations are looking to reduce their risk by implementing formal requirements management practices. The adoption of a formalized requirements management discipline can be leveraged by the quality assurance organization. By implementing a requirements-based testing methodology and ensuring complete requirements test coverage, companies can increase efficiency, reduce the risk of failure and improve overall software quality. Requirements- based testing is also popular with organizations following iterative or agile development styles, because it ensures complete coverage of changing requirements, in which a continuous develop-build-deploy cycle is in use.