Reliable requirements through the quality gateway

We accept that testing software is an integral part of building a system. However, if the software is based on inaccurate requirements then, despite well-written code, the software will be unsatisfactory. Instead of limiting our testing to code, we should start testing as soon as we start work on the requirements for a product. This paper describes a quality gateway process for testing relevance, coherency, traceability, consistency and other characteristics that contribute to successful requirements. The starting point of the tests is that each requirement must have a testable fit criterion. The fit criteria are used to test whether any given solution satisfies, or does not satisfy, the requirement. The aim of the quality gateway is to find requirements-related defects as early as they can be identified and hence prevent them from being incorporated in the design and implementation.