Essay on Sizing Software with Testable Requirements

Turbit, N. (2005, June). Defining the Scope of a Project. The Project Perfect white paper collection, (), .

As most projects are required to meet deadlines with resource restrains, managing the scope creep through careful planning and control is an essential ability to every project manager. There are a number of causes for scope creep in projects, and these will be addressed in the next chapters as well as a few solutions to prevent further damage to the project.

Another way of successfully gathering information is by building a prototype or model of the system, so that users can test or get an idea of what the finished product will be like. With this they can determine issues, problems, or inconsistency with the system. Another important part of gathering information is organizing it so that it can be understood and put to proper use. I propose categorizing the requirements into functional requirements, operational requirements, technical requirements, and transitional requirements. The functional requirements define how the user thinks the system is functioning overall, the operational requirements define what background processes need to be executed in order for the system to work optimally over a period of time, the technical requirements define what technical issues that must be addressed in order to successfully implement the system, and the transitional requirements define the processes or steps needed to implement the system smoothly and successfully. ("Mind Tools", 2012).

The commonly used methods of observation, interviews, etc., can help analysts pinpoint exact requirements based on user input and business processes. According to Charvat (2003), “One of the biggest benefits of a proper user requirements specification is that you'll be able to plan and estimate your project correctly, decreasing the chance of cost and time overruns.” The analyst must listen to the employees and gain a thorough understanding of all business processes before establishing the new system requirements.

3. A Use Case is developed to support requirement specification. It is a detailed description of specifications in its simplest form using Realtime scenarios of the functionality requirements between the actors and

Functional requirements define the internal workings of the software: that is, the calculations, technical details, data manipulation and processing, and other specific functionality that shows how the use cases are to be satisfied. It also contains nonfunctional requirements, which impose constraints on the design or implementation (such as performance requirements, quality standards, or design constraints). Applied Software Project Management (2005)

The information system’s requirements in the systems planning phase are based on a case summary, potential interview questions, and the systems analyst’s experience in systems planning. One must not only generate requirements based specifically on what users’ state they want or need. Analysts must also generate requirements based on insight into the overall organization and project goals.

The effect of integrating a new system, agreeing, and understanding a new project in the company or a new system is project scope. It is mandatory that everyone understands how and why the company will improve from upgrading to a new system. Agreeing what is best for the company and why it is important to update the system is also a must. It is important to a company for project scope because it can deal with everyone that is in the company and make sure that everyone is on the same page.

On the other hand, the quality characteristics which are must be maintained by the software are known as non-functional requirements. The functional requirements of the software are must be tested at the beginning phase but the security requirements, reliability and safety requirements (Non-functional requirements) are tested after the end of propose process.

Requirement Analysis: collect the business needs, document the requirements, and help team members to prepare Functional and enhancement Specification Document and Technical detail design document.

Reviewed and analyzed all the Functional Requirements Specifications, High Level Design, Detail Level design and Business Functional Specification document to develop test plans and test cases.

Non-functional requirements describe how the system operates and can also be limitations on the design of the system.

We used PV (planned Value), AC (actual cost), and EV (earned value) to calculate SPI (schedule performance index), SV (schedule variance), CPI (cost performance index), and CV (cost variance). Among these indicators, SPI and SV show whether a project is behind schedule or not, and CPI and CV indicate whether a project is under budget. Therefore, the statuses of the schedule and cost of technical infrastructure, software customization, and combined projects can be easily and clearly checked, respectively.

Each model was worked close by the others to guarantee streamlined correlations with be made among themselves, revealing and cross-referencing issues found while making comparable and similar models. Once these models were made, necessities and utilize cases moved toward becoming clearer and could be utilized to manufacture the Software Requirements Specification to later convey to the customer to improve the items prerequisites and stream of control to guarantee we were not missing any expected

Uncontrolled scope changes are known as scope creep, which mostly occurs during project execution, which often result in rework, cost overrun and failure to deliver projects on time (Jordan, 2010).