A human can make an error, which leads to a defect / bug in the program code at the most inopportune moment. The system may fail to perform correctly. Obviously, it’s much easier to fix a defect in a pair of requirement lines, than to look for an error among several hundred (or even thousands) lines of code afterwards.
Requirements testing is aimed at eliminating the maximum possible number of errors at the initial stages of system design. In this perspective, it allows you to:
- significantly reduce the total cost of the project;
- improve product quality;
- save the team spirit for all its members.
What Is Usability Requirement?
Requirement testing is conducted to determine whether software products are workable and doable in terms of time frames, resources and budget.
Do you know that most of the bugs appear because functional requirements are incomplete, inaccurate and has ambiguities?
That’s why before you start developing any project, it is strongly recommended generating usability requirements, test them and as a result, any equivoque will be eliminated.
Types of Usability Testing Requirements
What is the Basic Usability Requirement Criteria?
The basic criteria described below should be implemented during user testing of specification requirements. These criteria verify whether each testing requirement complies with the concepts of completeness, unambiguity, consistency, traceability, practicability, and testability.
Completeness. A requirement must contain all necessary information needed for developers and everyone else who uses it to fulfil their tasks. A list of system usability requirements is considered to be complete if all its elements are submitted and each component is made with full description to express the user needs. While testing, QA must pay attention to the following checkpoints:
- Absence of expressions such as “so on”, “others”, “etc”.
- Mention of the non-existent reference information. For example, this may be a non-existent characteristic.
- The requirement should not be based on functionality that is not defined.
We recommend using this approach to verify that all possible scenarios have been considered in the requirement, try to find any gaps or open cases, and double-check whether all statements are correct, true, and logical.
Unambiguity. Testing a system for incorrect requirements is a waste of time, money, and effort. Each criterion should be transparent, clearly and precisely formulated; only a unique description and explanation is allowed. The request must be comprehensible, intelligible and plain. The demand should not contain complex tasks, but if so, we recommend to ease and alleviate test understanding. How could you facilitate this? Use some additional materials, for example, diagrams, or tables, or pictures.
Consistency. The requirements may not contradict each other or current standards. If they do, we must determine their priority for resolving such conflicts.
Traceability. For each problem, you must assign a unique identification code. With the help of this identifier, you and your team can track its development throughout the app / project lifecycle.
Practicability. In case if your client makes unrealistic request in terms of time and resources spent on developing, or requires the development of functions that will be unreliable, the risk management system must be defined and an appropriate action plan must be developed to deal with it.
Testability. Find out whether there is a way to check whether implementation meets a requirement. Is it possible to verify this testing requirement and ensure whether it is working?
Examples of Usability Requirements
The following requirements were received: “Letters and numbers can be entered in the “Username” box.” The developer had to find out which particular letters (Cyrillic, Latin, or Arabic) and which numbers (integer, fractional, Roman) were meant. After clarifying the requirements, the developer implemented the functionality according to the comments of the analyst. The task went into UI/ UX testing. The tester could not understand by what criteria he should check this field, and also asked for clarification.
Negative effects of such activities:
- time-wasting by several team members;
- mismatch of the final and initially planned functionality.
How to resolve this problem?
If you want to avoid even the possibility of such a problem, we recommend implementing a usability requirements analysis phase, that must be completed before coding begins. No one knows a software product better than a QA specialist who works daily, so it would be a great idea to conduct a QA check for all the testing requirements specifications. That’s why requirement analysis is the first phase of the software testing life cycle (STLC), and it begins right after Software Requirements Specification (SRS) is provided to the QA team.
Requirement verification ensures that all requirements are clearly and precisely defined to start the testing process. This solution must guarantee all parties that requirements are technically correct, completed, precise, consistent, measurable, trackable, modifiable, and doable.
Verification testing can be best performed via V-Model.
We have described almost all aspects of requirement measurement. To conclude, let’s summarize and describe usability requirement testing in a few words:
- they must be completely precise and specific without any uncertain moments;
- must be absolutely complete and contain no contradictions or discrepancies, and also be provable and checkable;
- and should have own criterion and characteristics for each requirement.
Do not ignore user testing of your project. It should be conducted at the requirement stage to avoid bugs that might be discovered in the future and cost you a lot of money. We strongly advise communicating with your shareholders as much as it is possible to specify the list of all testing requirements before you design or implement a project.
