Requirements Validation and Testing

Quality is the major business differentiator in IT. Studies such as the Chaos Report show that the most common cause of low quality is having poor, or poorly understood, requirements. Other common causes are poor design, code, and installation. While prevention of defects is the best cure, identifying and fixing defects as early as possible is key, and some of the responsibility for doing that falls on the business analyst (BA). This course, therefore, concentrates on the validation techniques for:

• Requirements
• The system at the business level (functional and usability testing)
• Acceptance
• Business purpose (stakeholder satisfaction with the production product)

In this course you will learn the importance of achieving quality and your role in doing so. You will learn which project and product factors affect the two components of risk (likelihood and impact), and you'll learn to apply those to various real-life validation situations using a case study and practicing testing decision-making. You will learn techniques for:

• Validating requirements or any text-based product (such as procedures or plans)
• Testing functional and manual requirements
• Assessing and testing usability

You will learn to plan functional and usability testing at the business level and the essential elements to document that planning. You'll examine your role in Acceptance, including Acceptance of an outsourced product, and you'll determine how to assess stakeholder satisfaction with the product in production.

Since there is never time, even theoretically, to validate all details of a product, an important concept is using risk assessment to determine the appropriate thoroughness of validation at every stage. Exercises in risk assessment and all the major validation techniques are an integral part of this course.

While the involvement of BAs in testing varies widely across companies, this course assumes maximum involvement at the business level (excluding nonfunctional testing except for usability). Each student can tailor the content to suit a specific company's policies.

Students pursuing a university-recognized and/or accredited certificate in Canada or continuing education units in the US must attend at least 90% of class time, participate in class exercises and section-knowledge checks, and score at least 70% on an end-of-class, multiple-choice assessment.

1. Testing and the BA

• Good Testing and Checking
• Project Team Verification and Validation Process
• Types of Testing
• Ways to Verify and Validate

2. High-Level BA Validation

• Your Budget and Risk Management
• Estimating the Risks of Defects in the System
• Developing a High-Level Validation Strategy and Budget

3. Finding Defects in the BRD

• Characteristics of a Good BRD
• Techniques of Finding Defects in a BRD
• Choosing the Appropriate Technique

4. Planning Testing

• Structured Testing
• Mid-Level Test Strategy
• Test Cases

5. BA-Level Functional Testing in the Automated System

• Black Box Testing
• Black Box Testing Techniques
• Automated Low-Level Test Strategy

6. BA Validation of Processes

• Validating Processes
• Glass Box Testing Techniques
• Process Low-Level Test Strategy

7. Usability Validation

• The Importance of Usability
• Usability Validation by the BA
• Getting Users Involved in Validation
• Usability Testing

8. Documenting the Test Plan

• Capturing the BA Test Plan
• Formal BA Test Plan

9. Acceptance, Installation, and Validation to Business Needs

• Acceptance
• Installing the System
• Validating to the Business Needs
• Completing the Project

• Business analysts who have some testing experiencing and want one or more of the following:
  • A more formal understanding
  • To be more efficient
  • To standardize across a group, department, or organization
• Business analysts who don't know anything about testing and want to learn how to do it
• Project managers who want to understand BA terminology and how the BA sees risks