Paul Gerrard

First published 11/10/2009

Requirements are the foundations of every project yet we continue to build systems with requirements that have not been tested. We take care to test at every stage during design and development and yet the whole project may be based on untested foundations.

Functional system tests should be based around coverage of the functionality described in the requirements, but it is common for the design document to be used as the baseline for testing because the requirements can't be related to the end product. In the worst case, system tests can become large scale repetitions of unit tests. It is not surprising that many system tests fail to reveal requirements errors.

We ask users to perform acceptance tests against their original requirements. But who can blame enthusiastic users when they become overwhelmed by the task? The system bears so little resemblance to what they asked for that the acceptance test often becomes a superficial hands-on familiarisation exercise. This paper proposes that a unified view of requirements can improve the requirements gathering process, give users a clearer view of their expectations and provide a framework for more effective system and user acceptance tests.

A Unified Approach to System Functional Testing

Tags: #functionaltesting #behaviouranalysis

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