How to ensure 100% coverage of requirements Web | Mobile?

At its simplest, a requirement is a service, function, or feature that a user needs. Requirements can be functions, constraints, business rules, or other elements that must be present to meet the needs of the intended users.

The testing team should be attentive to the detail and should collaborate with the stakeholders of the project, such as business analysts, developers, designers. It helps to understand the requirements of the product/project better. 

100% Requirements coverage is an important indicator in the software testing in terms of quality and effectiveness. Requirement coverage is not only covering the exact requirements, but it should also cover all the possible real-life scenarios. The tester should think about such kind of scenarios while designing the test cases. Develop the Best Test Cases to Get Maximum Test Coverage.

e.g.:- When you are testing any banking application, try to disconnect the internet connection after clicking on the "pay" button while doing an online transaction.

Requirements coverage

Requirements coverage is used to determine how well the test cases cover the software requirements. For that, you simply need to divide the number of requirements covered by the total number of scoped requirements for a sprint, release, or project.

"Forward Traceability" allows you to map requirements to test cases while ensuring that the desired project is progressing in the desired direction.

"Reverse Traceability" allows you to map test cases to requirements. Reversing the mapping of the two factors also enable you to ensure that your project progress is being made in the right direction and whether the final product has met the designated requirements or not.

"Real Life Scenarios" allows you to map requirements to real-life scenarios to test cases.

After all, this is why any software project is conceived, developed, and implemented. The basic criteria to see if software testing is being performed to its fullest is to ensure if all the requirements, as stated by the customer, are being met or not. It is vital to map each user's requirement with functionality in the software to ensure no missing links. Once this is 100% achieved, we can say complete requirements coverage is accomplished, and this can be set as a primary parameter to exit software testing.

By doing this, you can make sure that you have covered 100% of the app (100% or Maximum Requirement coverage). However, to make the software defect-free at End-user Perspective, we need to follow Defect Prevention Methods And Techniques.

Defect Prevention Methods And Techniques

Effective Defect Prevention Approach and Critical Views:

Quality Assurance is a term that is commonly used to address the testing teams in IT projects.

Technicalities aside, quality assurance activities are not just targeted at defect identification (which is finding defects after they happen. This simply is testing or Quality control) but also include defect prevention (making sure the defects do not happen in the first place or the defects are removed/reduced before making their way into the software product).

Tester should have the following, which makes up his/her mindset before starting to test the Application:

1. Believe Defect-Free Software is Possible

2. Think Defect-Free Software is Important

3. Commit to Delivering Defect-Free Software

A simple equation equivalent can be:

QA= QC (defect identification) + Defect prevention

Although this sounds fairly simple, there is less emphasis or direction available on how or what exactly are defect prevention tasks.

The truth of the matter is, defects found during the testing phase or worse after release are costlier to find & fix and might cause a loss of trust in the brand. Hence, the earlier the prevention measures are taken, the better. Besides, defect prevention also helps companies achieve the highest CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) Level.

Defect Prevention

Defect Prevention (DP) is a strategy applied to the software development life cycle that identifies the root causes of defects and prevents them from recurring. It is the essence of Total Quality Management (TQM). DP, defined by the Software Engineering Institute as a level 5 Key Process Area (KPA) in the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), involves analyzing defects encountered in the past and specifying checkpoints and actions to prevent the occurrence of similar defects in the future. In general, DP activities are a mechanism for propagating the knowledge of lessons learned between projects.

Software Defect Rate Of Discovery Versus Time

Mature IT organizations have an established software process to carry out their responsibilities. This process is enhanced when DP methodologies are implemented to improve quality and productivity and reduce development costs. The below figure clearly depicts that identifying defects late in the game is costly.

Defect Prevention Strategy for Software Development Process

A model for an enhanced Software Process, including a DP strategy, is presented in the below figure. Adopting a DP methodology will allow the organization to provide its clients with a product that is "of High Quality and Bug-Free."

Software Defect Prevention - In a Nutshell - iSixSigma

On a macro level, defects can be classified and filtered as depicted in the below figure

Features of Defect Prevention

Management must be committed to following a written policy for defect prevention at both the organization and project level. The policy should contain long-term plans for funding, resources, and the implementation of DP activities across the organization, to improve software processes and products. Once in place, a review of results provides identification of effective activities and lessons learned to further improve the organization's success in applying a DP strategy.

To assist in the successful implementation of a DP strategy, members of the software-engineering group and other software-related groups should receive training to perform their DP activities. Training should include software quality assurance, configuration management, and document support and focus on DP and statistical methods (e.g., cause/effect diagrams and Pareto analysis).

The creation of an Action Plan plays a crucial role in the implementation process. At the beginning of a software task, the members of the team meet to prepare for the task and related DP activities. A kick-off meeting is held to familiarize members of the team with details of the implementation process. Included in the meeting is information related to the software process, standards, procedures, methods, and tools applicable to the task, with an emphasis on recent changes; inputs required and available for the task; expected outputs; and methods for evaluation of outputs and of adherence to the software process. A list of common errors and recommended preventive actions are also introduced along with team assignments, a task schedule, and project goals.

Periodic reviews are conducted by each of the teams assigned to coordinate DP activities. During the reviews, action items are identified, and priorities are set based on a causal analysis that determines:

1. The causes of defects,
2. The implications of not addressing the defects,
3. The cost to implement process improvements to prevent defects, and
4. The expected impact on software quality.

Co-authored with Srikanth, QA Engineer and Project Manager at AigloSoft.

If you have any questions regarding test coverage or quality assurance project management, don't hesitate to DM me or ping us at:

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