Shift Left: Strengthening the Requirements Elicitation Process for Improving Quality Software in Software Development Projects
S.P. Udhayakumar, M. Sivasubramanian · Research Square · 2022
Abstract With new methodologies accelerating software delivery, software developers are expected to follow DRIFT (Do it right the first time) and ensure that the delivered software is error-free and works as expected. While the software development community has adopted and accelerated many delivery methodologies, it still finds delivering defect-free software a challenging task. To deliver defect-free software, identifying and eliminating the defects prior to delivery is key. However, to develop defect-free software, the focus on quality must start very early in the lifecycle. This paper is an attempt by the authors to get to the underlying cause of defect injection and identify ways to reduce defect injection. In this paper, the authors aim to analyse the requirements elicitation process and its effect to software defects. This paper aims to identify the source of defect injection with a specific focus on people and process aspects. The authors performed Phase Containment Efficiency (PCE) analysis on the selected software projects using the phase injected and phase detected categorization of defects. Root cause analysis was also performed on the same to identify the phase and cause of injection. Subsequently, the cost of fixing those defects was ascertained using industry-standard cost data. Using these analysis outcomes, the authors developed a framework to address the causes and prevent defect injection. A systemic review and analysis of the source data are performed in this paper, based on the same solution themes to prevent defect injection are recommended which are to be part of the requirements elicitation process.