Sunday, December 11, 2005

Requirements validation anti-pattern

One thing I have seen a lot of is validating requirements with a completed system. This has been sometimes misnamed "User Acceptance Testing".

This typically means that someone shortchanged requirements gathering, by making a guess at what the users need, and having the developers do it.

In its most pathological mode, "User Acceptance Testing" also suggests that the users are doing functional testing as well, and that developers do not need to test their product.

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