Automatic Detection

For high requirements quality we need quality assurance. In a previous post, I explained why automatic methods cannot replace manual methods. Instead I suggested to combine both worlds. And the ugly truth is, in both system testing and requirements engineering, we need both manual and automatic quality assurance to control requirements quality and test quality. Now you wonder, how? I got you covered. In this brief post, I want to point out how you can combine the two worlds and how you benefit from the combination.

Ok, after I publish this blog post, I will probably get some angry calls from my sales department... Well, truth must be told. There are many crazy defects in requirements, and, as I wrote in my last post, you can detect quite a bunch of them automatically (and you should do so!). When I present our automatic methods for natural language requirement smells or automatic methods for detecting defects in tests to our customers, I'm proud to say that they are usually very excited. Sometimes they are too excited and then this can turn into a problem. What I mean is that I explain all the amazing things that you can detect with tools and suddenly people think that the tool will solve all the problems that they face. Spoiler alert: It doesn't. And because we're a company that is interested in happy customers, I want to briefly summarize all the problems (*that come into my mind) that a tool can't solve. And because I don't want to leave you in despair, I will also suggest some solutions, how I personally would suggest to work on that problem.

I am a strong advertiser of modern, automatic methods to improve our day to day life. And so I really don't want to check by hand whether my tests and requirements fit my template, or whether my sentences are readable. So quality assurance and defect detection, for example reviews or inspections, should use automation as far as possible. BUT: When I speak to clients, sometimes people get so hooked up by the idea of automatic smell detection, that I need to slow them down. Therefore, this post tries to give a rough overview: What is possible to detect automatically? The answer basically depends on two questions:

1. How much syntax (or structure) do your artifacts and tests have?
2. Which language do you use?

In this post I will refer to requirements artifacts here and there, but the answers are pretty much the same for both system tests and requirements.