What is requirements validation?
The process of checking that requirements are correct, complete, feasible, and represent business needs accurately.
What is formal requirements validation?
After analysis is complete, the Business Requirements Document (BRD) is reviewed by stakeholders to confirm the requirements are accurate and suitable.
Who reviews the BRD during formal validation?
A review group including:
• Business sponsor
• Business owners
• SMEs
• Solution architect
• Developers
• Testers
• Project office representatives.
What do different stakeholders check during formal validation?
• Sponsor – alignment with business objectives and scope
• Business owners – requirements clearly express business needs
• SMEs – correct business practice
• Solution architect – supports solution architecture
• Developers – technically feasible
• Testers – testable
• Project office – follows standards and policies.
What are the final stages of the formal review process?
• Review comments
• Review outcomes.
What are the two stages of Agile requirements validation?
- Project initiation – outline solution defined and backlog created
- Backlog maintenance – requirements refined until ready for development.
What activities occur during Agile backlog refinement?
• Align requirements with models
• Create low-fidelity prototypes
• Discuss scenarios for complex user stories/use cases
• Build workflow models (e.g., swimlane/activity diagrams)
• Define acceptance criteria.
What is requirements traceability?
Tracking a requirement’s origin, ownership, and final outcome.
What are the two types of requirements traceability?
• Horizontal – trace requirement from creation to delivery
• Vertical – trace requirement up and down the requirement hierarchy to business goals.
What is change control and what are its stages?
A process for managing changes to requirements using configuration/version control.
Stages:
1. Document the change
2. Analyse the change
3. Consult stakeholders
4. Decide whether to approve it.
What is the purpose of Agile requirements validation?
To ensure requirements are sufficiently defined and ready for development before entering an iteration.
Some requirements require deeper validation, such as:
• Compound requirements – need breaking into smaller items (often non-functional requirements like security, accessibility, usability).
• Complex requirements – need clear business rules and may require SME discussions and modelling techniques (e.g. data models, activity diagrams, decision tables, state machine diagrams).
