Requirements Review Challenges
Conducting effective peer reviews of requirements is important but challenging. Here’s how to handle several requirements review barriers.
If someone said you could only perform a single quality practice on a software project, what would you choose? I’d pick peer reviews of requirements. I believe this the highest-leverage software quality technique we have available today.
In a peer review, someone other than the author of a work product examines the product for quality problems and improvement opportunities. Reviewing requirements is a powerful practice. Use them to identify ambiguous or unverifiable requirements, find requirements that aren’t sufficiently detailed yet, spot conflicts between requirements, and reveal numerous other problems.
The most effective type of peer review is a structured process called an inspection. Inspection of requirements is one of the highest-leverage software quality techniques available. Several companies reported that they avoided up to ten hours of labor for every hour they invested in inspecting requirements documents and other software deliverables. Who wouldn’t want to try a technique that might offer a 1,000 percent return on investment?
