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Table of contents
Meeting the contract
 2
The requirements management problem
 2
 A better approach
 4Creating complete and verifiable requirements  4Storing requirements in a central repository with native version control  5Establishing traceability between requirements  5Tracing requirements across the application lifecycle  5Reusing and sharing application requirements  6 Applying risk factors  10 A lifecycle quality management platform  10
The HP difference
 11The right solution  11The right services  11 A complete solution  11
Learn more
 12
Reducing risk through requirements-drivenquality management:an end-to-end approach
 White paper
 
RiskQualitycontractITresourcesBusinessrequirementsCommitment
2
Meeting the contract
 When IT undertakes a development project, it signs—figuratively or literally—a contract with the businessThe contract spells out what requirements will befulfilled and when they will be delivered Further, ITcommits to a level of quality in the product that facil-itates its success when deployed No attorney wouldpermit a client to sign a legal contract unless all therisks were known, yet IT departments often lack theability to quantify and respond to the risks that ariseduring development and test Requirements manage-ment—as part of a comprehensive software quali-ty management system—helps IT quantify the risksassociated with each requirement and make informeddecisions about resource allocation and releaseMore than sixty percent of IT organizations that usean automated software quality system use HP QualityCenter software HP Quality Center software goesbeyond traditional approaches to requirements man-agement by allowing quality managers to reduce riskand optimize the business outcome of the project Thispaper shows how it does this by tracing requirementsfrom definition to release and by giving IT and busi-ness managers real data to support decisions aboutcontract fulfillment
The requirementsmanagement problem
The dynamics of software quality management arewell understood For example, most people know thatthe majority of software defects are introduced earlyin the application lifecycle but found much later Asshown in Figure 1, the National Institute of Standardsand Technology (NIST) estimates about 70 percent ofsoftware defects are introduced in the requirementsphase
2
And the later they are found, the more expen-sive they are to fix According to one study, the cost tofix a defect after delivery is more than 100 times thecost to fix it in the requirements and design phaseThese facts highlight the need for close collaborationwith business users, careful, unambiguous require-ments definition and management of requirementsthroughout the application lifecycle
1
IDC, Worldwide Distributed Automated Software Quality Tools, 2007–2011 Forecast
2
NIST 2002 RTI Project 7007.011
Sixty percent of IT organizationsthat use an automated softwarequality system use HP QualityCenter software
1
 
Introduction of defects
80%
60%40%20%0%Requirementand designCodingandunit testUseracceptancetestProduction
Detection of defects
80%
4%17%60%21%60%40%20%0%Requirementand designCodingandunit testUseracceptancetestProduction
TestrequirementsBusiness processesTestsEffectsBusinessrequirementsRelease
3
Managing requirements through definition, develop-ment, test, and release is a joint effort betweenbusiness analysts—who represent the customer’sneeds—and software quality managers who shepherdthem through the testing and release process Whentheir name is on the contract, business analysts must:
•Defineconciseandunambiguousrequirements.•Establishthebusinessvalueofeachrequirement.•Quantifytheriskassociatedwitheachrequirement.•Understandthedependenciesofeachrequirement.
Software quality managers have critical questions toanswer:
•Aretherequirementsverifiablewhenimplemented?•Aretherequirementsrealistic,andhowwilltheybeimplementedandtested?•WheredoIassigntestingresourcesforincreasedefficiencyandreducedrisk?•Istheplannedtestingfortherequirementagood
trade-off between the requirement’s business value
anditsrisk?
Even with careful planning, requirements change,and changes ripple through development, test, andrelease Changes pose additional questions:
•Howdoesthechangeaffectotherrequirements?•Whattestsareaffectedbythechange?•Whatnewrisksareintroducedbythechange?•Whatistheeffectontherelease?
 Without answers to the questions above, trade-offdecisions become risky Analysts may believe onerequirement is more important than another, but theycannot show why Test planners may decide to reducethe test effort on some requirements, but they cannotquantify the risk of doing so, and they cannot dem-onstrate that the risk is justified given the businessvalue of the requirement When functionality must bedropped from a release, no one can demonstrate tothe business that the proposed change offers the bestbusiness value at the appropriate risk point comparedto other alternatives
Figure 1
 NIST software qualitystudy results
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