The requirements

The requirements

The folder nodes
- Tabs
- Toolbar

The requirements nodes
- Tabs
- Toolbar

The requirements tree gathers all the business requirements of the products/SUTs.
Requirements can be handled directly by XStudio or retrieved from:

Jira (see Jira (XML-RPC) Requirements settings or Jira (REST) Requirements settings).
VersionOne (see VersionOne Requirements settings).

If your requirements come from another third-party system you can configure them as generic (see Generic Requirements chapter).

Here is a typical requirements tree. It displays a number of useful pieces of information:

the total number of requirements
the number of requirements in each folder
the status of each requirement (indicated by the color of the icon)
the priority of each requirement (indicated by the column)
the risk level of each requirement (indicated by the column)

Requirements are all the business requirements the SUT should comply with. Generally, the requirements list is the first thing to do before working on detailed specification. In a perfect world, the SUT should come with a list of requirements but this may not be the case.
Entering the requirements of the SUT is an optional task. We do encourage to completely define the requirements though. This information is mandatory for coverage reporting.
In the requirements tree, you can add the complete description of each requirement or you can decide to just point to the external requirements document(s).
It is possible to group/organize the requirements by creating a structure of folders and sub-folders hosting the requirements.

Coverage Metrics

In order to have a quantifiable follow-up of the coverage, the requirements tree includes a coverage column showing at a glance the coverage of each requirement in the tree. Coverage is also consolidated at folder level.
The coverage indicator provides the completion estimate in terms of specifications or tests.
Depending on the type of coverage requested (through the Coverage drop-down menu), the three will include different kinds of coverage:

By specifications

To view the coverage indicator by specifications:

in the tree, select a requirement
click on the drop-down list Coverage
select "By specifications" item
the requirement coverage and the number of specifications linked to this requirement are displayed

The coverage of each requirement in the tree is directly taken from the value in its Details tab.

By default, when a requirement is being created, a 0% value will be assigned to it. As soon as one specification is linked to the current requirement, the coverage indicator of the current requirement will switch automatically to 100%. However, you can manually edit it, refining the coverage value between 0% and 100%. For instance, if you think that you will need approximately 10 specifications to cover the requirement and that you already have linked 2 of them, just set the coverage to 20%.

NOTE: This feature is what will allow you to get a truly reliable coverage metrics.

NOTE: If no specification is linked to the current requirement, you cannot manually edit the coverage indicator. If you try to edit it anyway, the following message will pop up:

To edit the coverage indicator

select a requirement
click on Details menu
set the value of Coverage by specifications (%) field
click on submit
the requirement coverage is modified in the tree

By tests

The requirements are indirectly covered by tests. To view the coverage by tests:

click on the drop-down list Coverage and select
the requirement coverage and the number of tests linked to this requirement are displayed

The coverage of each requirement is calculated based on:

its coverage by specifications,
the coverage by tests and the weight of each specification linked to the requirement.

The weight of each specification is calculated according to its degree of priority using this simple mapping:

Priority	Weight
Low	1
Normal	2
High	3

Coverage aggregation

For each folder the coverage is calculated by aggregation, based on the coverage of its underlying objects.

For instance, the coverage by specifications of a folder will be calculated using the formula:

Searching

For more details, please refer to the Searching objects chapter.

Importing data

If you are migrating from manual test management - using for instance a basic spreadsheet application - or another test management system to XStudio you may want to import all your tests and test cases from Excel, CSV (semi-column ';' delimited) or XML.
For more details, please refer to the thoroughly Import data tutorial.

The root node

Tabs

Traceability Matrix

One of the major interests in using a test management tool is the ability to trace what is covered and what is not
To get the global requirements traceability matrix:

switch to the Requirements module on the side bar
select the root folder in the tree
on the right panel, select the Traceability Matrix tab
the requirements tree appears, including in the right column, all the specifications (or all the tests if you disabled the specifications in your settings) covering each requirement.

This traceability matrix is also present in the requirement book (that can be generated from XStudio).

Coverage

The Coverage tab will display the coverage details of the root folder in terms of SUTs, specifications (if enabled) and tests.
In addition, some advice is given to improve the coverage of the root folder:

Statistics

The Statistics tab will display some metrics based on all the requirements in the tree:

A status breakout pie chart showing how many requirements exist for each status
A priority breakout pie chart showing how many requirements exist for each priority
A risk breakout pie chart showing how many requirements exist for each risk level

You can customize the requirement by creating some new custom fields that will appear in the Details tab of the requirement.
Custom fields can have different types: text fields, drop-down menu, checkbox, formatted text field. They can also be marked as mandatory or not and are positioned at the index you specify.
The Custom fields tab enables you to create, edit and delete custom fields.

Create a custom field

Here is the process to create a custom field for a requirement:

select the root folder in the tree
on the right panel, click on the create custom field button
enter the name, the type, the position, if it is mandatory or not and the default value of the custom field and submit
the custom field immediately appear in the panel
the new custom field is added to all the requirements assigned with its default value

Edit a custom field

Here is the process to edit a custom field for a requirement:

in the tree, select a root folder
on the right panel, select the custom field
click on the edit custom field button
change the name, the type, the position, if it's mandatory or not and/or the default value of the custom field and submit
the custom field immediately appears in the panel with new values
the custom field is updated on all the requirements (except its value)

Delete custom field

Here is the process to delete a custom field for a requirement:

select the root folder in the tree
on the right panel, select the custom field
click on the delete custom field button
confirm and submit
the custom field immediately disappears from the panel
the custom field is removed from all the requirements

Toolbar

Create a folder

A folder can be created only under the root node of the tree or another folder node

Here is the process to create a new folder:

select the root folder in the tree
on the right panel, click on the create folder button
enter the name of the folder and submit
the folder immediately appears in the tree

Create a report

It may be interesting to export or to print a global report on all the requirements you have.
For more details, refer to the Requirements report chapter.

Search requirements

For more details, refer to the Advanced and plain text search chapter.

The folder nodes