Building Quality Requirements | Why Didn't You Test That?
Welcome to episode 17 of the Why Didn’t You Test That? Podcast! In this episode, Curiosity's Rich Jordan and James Walker, are joined by Colin Hammond, CEO of ScopeMaster. Together, they discuss the importance of requirement analysis, quality, and sizing in agile software development.
Requirements Analysis and Scoping
In this episode, Curiosity's Rich Jordan and James Walker, are joined by Colin Hammond, CEO of ScopeMaster.
Colin Hammond starts the conversation by emphasising the need for early detection of project issues and the value of knowing the functional size of a project. Colin also mentions the challenges in requirements quality and the impact of agile development on requirements.
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Shownotes
00.37 - Colin Hammond and ScopeMaster
06:12 - Challenges with Requirements
09:08 - Agile Dev and Requirements
11:35 - Effective Practices for Requirements
14:16 - Cost of Poor Requirements
20:40 - Balancing Speed and Clarity
25:23 - Sizing for Informed Decisions
31:26 - Predicting Schedule and Assessing Scope
33:36 - Estimation and People’s Abilities
38:26 - Democratisation of Quality
41:34 - Analysing Textual Requirements
45:13 - Impact of AI on Requirements
46:49 - AI Requirements: Augment Don’t Replace
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Full Episode Description
Welcome to episode 17 of the Why Didn’t You Test That? Podcast. In this episode, Curiosity's Rich Jordan and James Walker, are joined by Colin Hammond, CEO of ScopeMaster. Together, they discuss the importance of requirement analysis, quality, and sizing in agile software development. Colin Hammond starts the conversation by emphasising the need for early detection of project issues and the value of knowing the functional size of a project.
Colin also mentions the challenges in requirements quality and the impact of agile development on requirements. The neglect of skills and training in requirements elicitation and documentation leads to poor requirements quality and project issues. Colin Hammond emphasises how sizing software using functional points allows for accurate estimation, better resource planning, and early identification of project issues. This early detection is crucial to avoid budget overruns and ultimately to prevent a project from failing.
Agile development should not neglect the importance of high-level requirements and architecture to avoid costly changes later. Functional sizing provides a reliable predictor of effort, aiding in project estimation and scope management.
James Walker adds that AI advancements can help automate requirements analysis, generate test scenarios, and offer suggestions, but human supervision and context are essential. Organizations are starting to challenge the ownership of quality, recognizing the need for a holistic approach beyond testing.
The shift towards a quality engineering role and new quality-focused positions shows an increasing awareness of requirements and quality in software development.
Watch the complete episode to learn more!
The Curiosity Software Podcast, hosted by Rich Jordan! Together, they share their insight and expertise in driving software design and development in test. Learn how you can improve your journey to quality software delivery, by considering how much do you really understand about your systems, and when things inevitably go wrong, why didn’t you test that?