ISTQB and IREB are joining forces (42)

When you want a story to draw attention to something you find important it doesn't necessarily have to be a long one. I think this article is an important message from someone who works in both software testing and requirements engineering.

Requirement Engineering practices, from context analysis through elicitation until documentation and validation, was traditionally seen at the beginning of a development project, or even preceding the project.

Testing, especially in a waterfall type software development lifecycle, traditionally took place at the end, when development was finished.

Many of the more than 40 blogs we published on LinkedIn over the last months addressed this as currently we see things differently. Testers don't wait until the product is ready, they are involved in getting those requirements testable, requirements engineers no longer leave the building after delivering a thick document on the table of the development manager, they stay involved until the product is delivered to the client and maybe even longer.

Both the testing as well as the requirements engineering discipline are concerned with ensuring that the right product is created with the right quality. It is obvious that they should join forces.

ISTQB (the International Software Testing Qualification Board) and IREB (the International Requirements Engineering Board) have 'discovered' this as well and have started to cooperate.

Last year December IREB and ISTQB decided to form an alliance. Their first joint accomplishment was the alignment of their glossaries. Version 3.5 of the ISTQB glossary contains the first alignments with the IREB Glossary version 2.0 and vice versa. According to the ISTQB website there (luckily) was an overlap of 75 terms already. The effort required was therefore limited.

?Why is this so important? Well basically because if we (testers and requirements engineers) want to achieve the same things (valid and high quality solutions) we have to work together and we have to speak the same language. That common language is the bridge to get our messages across.

I tend to focus on language issues but there will be more as both organisations want to "further promote the Software Testing and Requirements Engineering professions together".

This article is an article in the series about the versatile profession of requirements engineering. Every week a colleague of?Improve Quality Services?will share with the reader an aspect of requirements engineers from daily experience. Every article begins with a picture of a bridge. The bridge visualizes connecting two sides. In requirements engineering connecting different stakeholders assisting the stakeholders in collaboration and communication about requirements.

Articles published till date (articles 1 till 28 in Dutch):

1.?Requirements?(Piet de Roo, December 1, 2020)

2.?Shared Understanding?(Kaspar van Dam, December 8, 2020)

3.?Context en requirements structuur?(Patrick Duisters, December 15, 2020)

4.?Van Twin Peaks naar Twin Pines?(Patrick Duisters, December 22, 2020)

5.?Modellen om te bouwen?(Erwin Pasmans, January 5, 2021)

6.?Minimaal Modelleren?(Piet de Roo, January 12 2021)

7.?Begrip en Vertrouwen?(Benjamin Timmermans, January 19, 2021)

8.?En wat als de specialisten het niet met elkaar eens zijn??(Benjamin Timmermans, January 26, 2021)

9.?Waar zijn we nou helemaal mee bezig?!?(Erwin Pasmans, February 2, 2021)

10.?Soft skills? Keiharde wetenschap!?(Kaspar van Dam, February 9, 2021)

11.?… en nu enkele feiten: Requirement Attributen?(Patrick Duisters, February 16, 2021)

12.?Waarom, waarom, waarom, ...?(Piet de Roo, February 23, 2021)

13.?Een leven lang zorgen?(Erwin Pasmans, March 2, 2021)

14.?Casus: Requirements management bij een distributiecentrum in aanbouw?(Eduard Hartog, March 11, 2021)

15.?Iteratief versus Incrementeel?(Kaspar van Dam, March 16, 2021)

16.?Requirements of-the-shelf: geen maatwerk, geen requirements??(Erwin Pasmans, March 23, 2021)

17.?Creatief door constraints?(Piet de Roo, March 30, 2021)

18.?3 Amigo’s?(Patrick Duisters, April 13, 2021)

19.?4 Amigos (of meer?)?(Patrick Duisters, April 20, 2021)

20.?Requirements, de CoronaCheck-app en Fred Flintstone?(Benjamin Timmermans, April 28, 2021)

21.?Meer kapiteins op 1 schip (of staan de beste stuurlui aan wal)??(Erwin Pasmans, May 4, 2021)

22.?Hoe SMART is SMART??(Benjamin Timmermans, May 11, 2021)

23.?Jip en Janneke?(Piet de Roo, May 18, 2021)

24.?Laten we het simpel houden?(Patrick Duisters, May 25, 2021)

25.?Dilemma's?(Erwin Pasmans, June 1, 2021)

26.?Living Documentation Event 2021?(Kaspar van Dam, June 8, 2021)

27.?Non-functional Requirements?(Patrick Duisters, June 15, 2021)

28.?The Big Shift?(Kaspar van Dam, June 22, 2021)

29.?Why do we have these problems over and over again??(Erwin Pasmans, June 29, 2021)

30.?Non-functionals, who cares??(Benjamin Timmermans, July 6, 2021)

31.?Usability and UX, a revelation I had?(Benjamin Timmermans, July 13, 2021)

32.?How??(Piet de Roo, July 20, 2021)

33.?Requirements and design??(Erwin Pasmans, July 27, 2021)

34.?Tom's people skills to deal with the customers?(Piet de Roo, August 3, 2021)

35.?Requirements creep: the ideal pocketknife with 3000 functions?(Benjamin Timmermans, August 10, 2021)

36.?Requirements creep: good or bad??(Benjamin Timmermans, August 17, 2021)

37.?End with the begin in mind?(Piet de Roo, August 24, 2021)

38.?Requirements: Do we really need them??(Kaspar van Dam, August 31, 2021)

39.?Begin with the End in Mind?(Patrick Duisters, September 7, 2021)

40.?Solving the right problem?(Piet de Roo, September 14, 2021)

41. Adapt requirements (and your process) to your development approach! (Erwin Pasmans, September 21, 2021)