Requirement, Artifact, Coverage

Defines Requirement, Artifact, Coverage concepts.

Requirement

REQUIREMENT = singular documented physical and functional need

It is used in a formal sense in systems engineering, software engineering, or enterprise engineering. It identifies a necessary attribute, capability, characteristic, or quality of a system or of a process.

For example:

  • a required software feature to implement
  • a required security rule to apply
  • a required technical information to present in a training

Artifact

ARTIFACT = singular documented element that meet a requirement

For example:

  • a software use case, software test cases, software source code, software design document etc
  • a step of a process that ensures that a rule is applied
  • a training slide that explains a technical information
  • a new requirement that refines the parent one

Coverage

CORRECT statut = 1 to 1 relationship between artifact and met requirement

PARTIAL statut = coverage relationship that is not fully fulfilled

UNCOVERED statut = requirement that is not linked to an artifact, there is no coverage

Let "input" be a set of 4 requirements : I1 to I4. Let "output" be a set of 5 artifacts : O1 to O5.

Example 1

This basic example shows 3 requirements covered in 2 tests by using syntax extraction method.

Example 2

The coverages are drawn with an arrow. The partial coverages are drawn with a dotted arrow.

  • Requirement I1 is covered by artifact O1.
  • Requirement I2 is partially covered by artifact O2.
  • Requirement I3 is covered by artifacts O3 and O4.
  • Requirement I4 is uncovered.

The following text could be a WORD document that is equivalent to the example above.

1 Requirements

This is a text anywhere in your documentation. It can be in several documents.

1.1 Some requirements

<I1> This is the title of I1
This is the description of I1.
#EndText

<I2> This is the title of I2
This is the description of I2.
#EndText

1.2 Some other requirements

<I3> This is the title of I3
This is the description of I3.
#EndText

<I4> This is the title of I4
This is the description of I4.
#EndText

2 Artifacts
This is a text anywhere in your documentation. It can be in several documents.

2.1 Artifact O1
This is the description of artifact O1. <<I1>>

2.1 Artifact O2
This is the description of artifact O2. <<I2>> #Partial

2.2 Artifact O3
This is the description of artifact O3. <<I3>> #Partial

2.3 Artifact O4
This is the description of artifact. O4 <<I3>> #Partial

2.4 Artifact O5
This is the description of artifact O5.

The requirements and artifacts can be described in one or several documents of different type: MS WORD, MS POWERPOINT, MS EXCEL, PDF etc.

Version

Each requirement has a version attribute.