Testing Quality Requirements of a System-of-Systems in the Public Sector - Challenges and Potential Remedies

TL;DR

This paper discusses challenges in testing quality requirements in a large public sector system-of-systems, analyzing real case data and matching challenges with literature-based solutions to improve testing practices.

Contribution

It identifies key challenges in testing quality requirements and maps them to existing scientific solutions within a large public sector project.

Findings

Five main challenges identified in requirements engineering and test management.

Matching challenges with literature solutions like the twin peaks model and QUPER.

Insights valuable for large development projects and process improvements.

Abstract

Quality requirements is a difficult concept in software projects, and testing software qualities is a well-known challenge. Without proper management of quality requirements, there is an increased risk that the software product under development will not meet the expectations of its future users. In this paper, we share experiences from testing quality requirements when developing a large system-of-systems in the public sector in Sweden. We complement the experience reporting by analyzing documents from the case under study. As a final step, we match the identified challenges with solution proposals from the literature. We report five main challenges covering inadequate requirements engineering and disconnected test managers. Finally, we match the challenges to solutions proposed in the scientific literature, including integrated requirements engineering, the twin peaks model, virtual plumblines, the QUPER model, and architecturally significant requirements. Our experiences are valuable to other large development projects struggling with testing of quality requirements. Furthermore, the report could be used by as input to process improvement activities in the case under study.