Requirements reviews

A requirements review is a manual process that involves people from both client
and contractor organisations. They check the requirements document for anomalies
and omissions. The review process may be managed in the same way as program
inspectionsAlternatively, it may be organised as a broader activity
with different people checking different parts of the document.
Requirements reviews can be informal or formal. Informal reviews simply
involve contractors discussing requirements with as many system stakeholders as
possible. It is surprising how often communication between system developers and
stakeholders ends after elicitation and there is no confirmation that the documented
requirements are what the stakeholders really said they wanted. Many problems can
be detected simply by talking about the system to stakeholders before making a commitment
to a formal review.
In a formal requirements review, the development team should 'walk' the client
through the system requirements, explaining the implications of each requirement.
The review team should check each requirement for consistency as well as check
the requirements as a whole for completeness. Reviewers may also check for:
1. Verifiability Is the requirement as stated realistically testable?
2. Comprehensibility Do the procurers or end-users of the system properly understand
the requirement?
3. Traceability Is the origin of the requirement clearly stated? You may have to
go back to the source of the requirement to assess the impact of a change
Traceability is important as it allows the impact of change on the rest of the
system to be assessed. I discuss it in more detail in the following section.
4. Adaptability Is the requirement adaptable? That is, can the requirement be changed
without large-scale effects on other system requirements?
Conflicts, contradictions, errors and omissions in the requirements should be pointed
out by reviewers and formally recorded in the review report. It is then up to the
users, the system procurer and the system developer to negotiate a solution to these
identified problems.