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5. Process for ensuring the quality of the testing process
6. Defect reporting and fixing strategy
7. Regression testing strategy
8. Constraints of time, budget etc.
9. Progress reporting mechanisms
Now, all this information needs to be collected for executing the testing project.
This information may be available in project documents or it may have to be
elicited from the concerned executives. So, both elicitation and gathering may
have to be used in testing projects for capturing the project requirements.
I had seen some testing projects being outsourced without any specifications or
requirements or objectives being specified. They simply want the product to be
tested and certified. Of course, the testers can point out defects lurking, if any, in
the product. All the freedom is given to the testers to choose the type of tests they
like to conduct, the method of testing and the test cases design. In such cases,
brainstorming also would be a technique to generate project requirements.
3.7 Elicitation and Gathering in Software Maintenance
Projects
Software maintenance is said to be consuming about 50 % of a software product
life cycle. In some cases, it crossed the 50 % of the life cycle especially in the
mainframe COBOL products developed during the sixties and the seventies.
Software maintenance work may be carried out in-house or it could be outsourced.
When outsourced, the software maintenance project would have an overall con-
tract for the project comprising of the rates, time booking, process for resolution of
maintenance work requests, turnaround times, prioritization rules and so on. Then
each individual work request would be over the phone, in email or as a formal
documented request. Both elicitation and gathering are used in software mainte-
nance projects. When maintenance is carried out in-house, the formal documen-
tation is not rigorously enforced. An informal or barely formal information is
given to the IS department which deputes a Business Analyst to elicit require-
ments. Therefore, elicitation of requirements is used on more occasions than
gathering. Some organizations, especially large ones, do use very formal main-
tenance work requests and in such cases, even in in-house software maintenance,
gathering is the most extensively used technique for capturing project require-
ments. In outsourced projects, the outsourcer and the vendor could be separated by
seven seas. Personal elicitation is almost ruled out except for telephonic elicitation.
As there is a vendor—vendee relationship involving payments, estimation and
approval of estimates comes in. So, formal maintenance work requests are the
mostly used form of communication. These maintenance work requests would
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