Verifying and Validating the Solution

Course overview

Learn to reduce conflict, decrease defects, and increase customer satisfaction through implementation of requirements verification and validation processes. Develop superior documentation skills. Discover models that guide requirements management. Establish compliance to industry standards. Create requirements traceability processes. Tailor fundamental elements of the test process to various development environments. Reduce overhead by tailoring the traceability approach to the level of project risk. Discover how to lead the customer and development teams through the user acceptance test.

Prerequisites

• A comprehensive introductory business analysis course such as Principles of Business Analysis (HE551S) plus Crafting High Quality Requirements (HE555S)

Audience

This course is intended for business analysts and related professionals such as Project Managers, QA Managers, Project Customers, Technical Leads, Systems Engineers or anyone with a substantive role in the success of projects.

Course objectives

• Inspect for good requirements in the requirements documentation
• Identify objectives for verification and validation
• Demonstrate traceability of requirements from the business case to test plans
• Use traceability matrices to link the test plan to the requirements
• Create test cases from requirements documentation including use cases
• Plan and manage the test approach to mitigate project risk
• Tailor the test approach to your development environment
• Deliver project success through user acceptance testing
• Design successful outsourcing partnerships
• Apply lessons learned to process improvement initiatives

Next steps

• Advanced Business Analysis topics such as Value Driven Portfolio Management (HE557S)

Benefits to you

• Describe the responsibilities of the business analyst and the key verification and validation deliverables
• Explain the role of the business analyst in reducing requirements-related risks
• Differentiate among key test documents
• Successfully use validation and documentation techniques to hand-off requirements to design
• Select and complete a peer review process
• Identify development code verification testing techniques
• Analyze functional and non-functional verification testing techniques
• Deliver project success through user acceptance testing
• Assess customer satisfaction
• Demonstrate requirements traceability from the business case to test plans
• Plan and manage the test plan to mitigate project risk
• Tailor the test approach to your development environment

Course outline

• Define the verification and validation deliverables in the systems requirements life cycle
• Compare and contrast how development methodologies address project risk
• Pinpoint how mature quality practices reduce project risk

Critical Techniques

• Use verification and validation process models for requirements flow down
• Inspect for good requirements in the requirements documentation
• Describe the role of traceability in requirements deliverables and processes Critical Deliverables
• Define the key test documents and terms and create a project glossary
• Create a test plan approach that is tailored to the development environment
• Lead user acceptance testing for validation of product requirements

Test Types

• Compare and contrast test approaches and how they support project objectives
• Define key goals of white box, black box, regression testing, and user documentation testing
• Explain successful approaches to reporting and analyzing errors

Use Cases to Design Models

• Define the value of Use Cases
• Describe the traceability linkages between Use Cases and design models
• Plan the requirements validation deliverables

Use Cases to Test Cases

• Describe the key process steps and interfaces between team members
• Define use case elements that can be used for test cases
• Implement additional test cases for supplemental requirements

Tailoring the Verification and Validation Process to the Development Methodology

• Identity different configuration management responses for managing requirements change
• Explain the traditional, phased approach to IT development
• Describe risk reduction through incremental, iterative development processes

Test Outsourcing

• Define key charter and statement of work elements to manage the work and the relationship
• Manage the user acceptance process for successful project outcomes
• Describe key characteristics of managing external clients

Verification and Validation Challenges

• Assess organizational barriers to improving product and process quality
• Compare and contrast key testing risks in project environments
• Establish process improvement initiatives from lessons learned