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QA Podcast|QA Podcast #8: The Journey From Business Needs to Test and User Acceptance with Fergal McGovern Episode
Today we're talking to Fergal McGovern, CTO atSteeltrace. They're an Irish company that makes tools that help developers capture, document andmodel business, system and test requirements. Wolfgang and Fergal talk about the relationshipbetween requirements and testing.QA Podcast #8: The Journey From Business Needs to Test and User Acceptancewith Fergal McGovern (MP3, 16.5 MB, 23:32)Due to some URL-related fussiness, the iTunes directory hadn't been updatingthe last couple of podcasts. We diagnosed and resolved this issue with helpfroma listener--thanksa bunch, Chris! iTunes users may have noticed that episodes #6 and #7 arrivedimmediately after the issue was resolved, but now you should be all up to date.Here are some quotes from today's show:I'm quite intrigued about the way you position the starting point as beinggoals. A lot of people talk about requirements being the starting point. Butyou talk about goals or needs that first get translated into requirementsand then finally have an impact on how the system is tested.Unfortunately, simple communication is rarely simple in the real world. I'llgive you a case in point. What we found recently with Agile [software development]on one engagement that I Was involved in, a major US-based corporation. Theywere deploying Agile--specifically extreme programming (XP). I asked a seniorproject manager what the biggest challenge was with XP. Her answer was"nodocumentation".We frequently see business analysts play crucial roles in QA. On the otherhand, that can often be a bad thing, because the analyst is too close to theactual domain. Just like a coder doing testing, they're almost contaminatedby what's in their head as the primary flows and what they should focus on...whoever'splaying the role needs to be quite diligent.Links for this conversation's topic:ManagingSoftware Projects with Business-Based Requirements (PDF)Technorati Tags:quality assurance,qa,software testing,qa labs,qa podcast,requirements,user acceptance,traceability,agile,xp,programming
[ Fri, 18 Nov 2005 19:39:45 -0800 ]
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