BRS Validation Checklist

Business Requirement Specification
Validation Checklist

To be consistent with the principals of Best Business Requirements Practices™, the business requirements specification should be accurate, complete and clear.

Below is a checklist which represents the attributes of a quality, standard business requirements specification.

Accurate:

Are the requirements consistent – not contradicting other requirements?

Are any requirements in conflict with, or infeasible, given stated assumptions or constraints (business environment, technical environment, cost, schedule, resources)?

Do the requirements support the business, system and project objectives?

Are all activities and operations necessary? Are any identified requirements not required or out of scope?

Are all data requirements necessary; are any not required or out of scope?

Complete

Are the goals and objectives of the system clearly and fully defined?

Have all events and conditions been handled?

Have all operations been specified? Are they sufficient to meet the stated system objectives?

Have all objects and data in the Activity Specification been defined in the Information Model?

Have all required definitions and rules for objects and data been defined?

Does the specification satisfy the level of detail required by the design team?

Have all undefined, unresolved, incomplete specifications been identified for resolution?

Clear

Are all requirements free of implementation bias (not restricted to a specific design alternative)?

Are all requirements precisely and concisely stated?

Have all operations been stated in terms of their triggering events or conditions, information requirements, processing and outcomes?

Is the terminology and prose understandable by the business client/users?

Is there any ambiguity in any of the statements (operations, rules, definitions, etc.)?

Have all assumptions been clearly stated?

Compliant

Have Best Business Requirements Practices™ been utilized?

Do the deliverables conform to organizational standards, meet organizational process objectives, and follow industry standards from CMM, IDEF, IEEE, ISO, etc. that the organization is, or is intending to adhere to?

Information Model – Object Specifications

Have all objects been identified?

Have all objects in the Activity Specification been specified?

Have all data elements been identified?

Has all data in the Activity Specification been specified?

Have all necessary relationships been defined?

Have all identified data elements been "used"? (at least created & read)

Have all data items and relationships been correctly and precisely defined?

Have all data items been accurately attributed to the correct objects (Normalization)?

Have any Superclasses and Subclasses been identified and specified?

Have redundant or derived data items and relationships been identified (and/or eliminated)?

Functional Model – Activity Specifications

Have all required activities been specified?

Have all operations been correctly and precisely defined?

Have all outcomes of each operation been specified?

Have all standard/best practice/or identified life-cycle operations for each object been specified?

Do all operations identify the event(s) or conditions which trigger them?

Do all operations identify the operator (system or user)?

Do all operations use strong, unambiguous action verbs?

Are all specifications clear and unambiguous?

Is the data used in the operation clearly understood?

Do required operations use rules, formulas or conditions to qualify or define the processing of the operation?

Do all operations specify or clearly imply an outcome?

Has the Context Diagram been updated?

Have all interfaces and activities in the Context Diagram been specified?

Dynamic Change Model -- Flexibility, Maintainability, Adaptability, Resilience

Have all events and conditions identified in the activity specification been responded to?

Have all events and conditions identified in the object life-cycle been responded to and specified?

Do all operations identify the event(s) or conditions which trigger them?

Has the life-cycle of all objects been identified?

Have all critical states of an object been identified?

Do all required states of an object have activities or operations defined (that cause the change in state)?

Has each life-cycle model been correctly and precisely defined?

Are all outcome conditions defined?

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