Purpose

Defects per Requirement helps the team understand how defects relate to specific project requirements. It is used for planning and prioritization of work, and to identify any issues with the specification, design, or implementation of individual requirements.

Definition

Count: the number of defects associated with each requirement.

Group by defect severity.

Analysis

High number of defects associated with a specific requirement - This indicates that the requirement may have been poorly specified, or that there is an issue with its design or implementation. If the requirement is of low priority, the team may decide it should be dropped from the release.  High priority requirements with many associated defects may require the reassignment of resources from lower priority work to address the defects.

Below is an example of a Defects per Requirement report. Notice that there are no requirements with a large number of defects in any severity grouping.

Frequency and reporting

Teams review Defects per Requirement at the end of each iteration during their iteration assessment to determine if any corrective actions are needed.

Collection and reporting tools

IBM® Rational® ClearQuest®, IBM® Rational® Team Concert® and IBM® Rational® Quality Manager® collect defect data by state. IBM® Rational® Insight® provides an out of the box report for this metric.