On the delicate balance between RE and Testing: Experiences from a large company

Requirements Engineering and Testing are considered inseparable and together enable successful projects. One could make a statement that serious negligence of any of the two will bring catastrophic consequences for the project, delays, failures and unhappy customers. Thus, alignment and cooperation between the two are not only recommended but highly required for contemporary complex software and system development. In this paper, we share some experiences from a large company that significantly downplayed requirements engineering activities while shifting the focus to testing and QA activities. Despite that, the company´s products are well received by its customers and the company remains profitable and significantly growing. We share our experiences and discuss how this unbalance may actually be a recipe for success and what contextual factors enable using this approach.