How to Make Use of Empirical Knowledge About Testers’ Information Needs

Abstract

Software requirements specifications (SRS) serve as a source of communication and information for a variety of roles involved in development activities. From the viewpoint of these SRS consumers, which includes testers as one of the key customers, the analysis of requirements specifications is often frustrating as it is time consuming and often requiring a lot of cognitive effort due to the increasing complexity of the documented information. Filtering the large amount of information by generating views that fit role-specific demands of SRS consumers is a promising solution approach for tackling this problem. This paper discusses concepts and key functionalities of an initial tool implementation of our proposed solution that is based on detailed knowledge about information needs that we gained in a series of empirical studies. Furthermore, we present potential usage scenarios illustrating its application in industry from the viewpoint of a tester.