Requirements

Abstract

Many projects have discovered to their cost the undesirable consequences of allowing software development staff to skimp the early stages of the software life cycle in order to start the production of deliverable code as quickly as possible. The cost, in real terms, has been that of increased development time caused by error correction. Errors, like contagious diseases, are harder and more costly to eradicate the longer they are allowed to survive and spread. Greater care over specification and design is the only way of improving matters. Errors cost less to repair if they are picked up early; they cost nothing to repair if they are not made in the first place. Quality control is concerned with the detection and eradication of errors at the earliest possible moment in the software life cycle. As the Electrical Engineering Association publication Establishing a Quality Assurance Function for Software, EEA(1983), puts it:

Quality can only be achieved by building it in from inception; it cannot be added at a later stage.