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F. Requirements validation and system verification
Requirements validation involves checking:
- well-definedness - the requirements are unambiguous, not subject to differing interpretations
due to vagueness of language;
- consistency - the requirements do not contradict each another;
- correctness - the documented requirements truely agree with the customer's expectations;
- completeness - the requirements specify the planned behavior of the system in total detail.
Developing a glossary of technical terminology can be very helpful in addressing well-definedness and consistency.
Numerous meetings with the customer, identifying and examining scenerios and use cases will of course help to
ensure correctness. Analysis activities should address all aspects requirements validation. There should be
an intimate back-and-forth interaction between requirements capture and analysis.
Documentation and testing should be stressed throughout the entire development process. The requirements,
the analysis, the design, the implemented system and the development process itself are all worth documented.
Careful documentation can greatly facilitate traceability, so as to facilitate future enhancements as
well as error detection/correction. Traceability together with carefully planned testing procedures can go a
long way towards system verification, that is, in making sure that the system works and meets the
requirements specifications.
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