Structuring and Verifying Requirement Specifications through Activity Diagrams to Support the Semi-automated Generation of Functional Test Procedures

The higher the quality of the specification document, the lower the effort of its translation into design models and testing plans. Besides, an adequate level of abstraction to promote such translations must be described. Therefore, to ensure the quality of requirements specifications it is strategic to develop high quality software applications. So, in this paper a model-based approach to support the correctness, structuring, and translation of functional requirements specifications is described. This approach consists of facilities to build and inspect requirements specifications based on activity diagrams (capturing use cases), and derive functional tests from them. A tool to model and check the activity diagram, a checklist-based inspection technique and a test procedure generation tool form it. This approach was assessed in experimental studies that indicated its feasibility in specification time and a significant reduction of defects in the specified use cases when compared to ad-hoc approaches.