| Task: Product Map Walkthrough |
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| Test team must review the product map to ensure that the all products are represented, and information provided regarding them are free from ambiguities and inconsistencies. |
| Disciplines: Technical Reviews |
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Purpose
| Product Map walkthrough is held to ensure adequacy, technical feasibility and verify if all products were represented
by their optional and mandatory features. |
Relationships
| Roles | Primary Performer:
| Additional Performers:
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| Inputs | Mandatory:
| Optional:
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| Outputs |
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Main Description
| During Product Map walkthrough, the test team must review the product map to ensure that the products and domain
features were represented. It also improves the understanding of the test team regarding what is desired for each
application and reference architecture. After finishing the review, a detailed report is generated that lists items of
concern regarding the product features (Optional and Mandatory). |
Steps
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Plan for a Product Map Walkthrough
| This step serves as a guide to the product map review activity. The plan is prepared in a meeting, in which the review
goals are established, as well as roles (basically: review leader [who will coordinate the review], author [one who
produced the artifact under review], reviewers, and recorder [responsible for the review report]), team size and the right
participants, i.e. stakeholders, are defined. |
Prepare Product Map walkthrough
The responsible group for building the product map, as being very familiar with the item under review, is
nominated the author. Its responsibility includes preparing a skilled presentation of the material aimed
at making the remaining team members able to build a comprehensive mental model of the item so that it is
possible to both evaluate its quality and detect defects.
Another in the team is nominated the review leader, who will actually later coordinate the progression of the
review.
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Conduct Product Map walkthrough
In this step a meeting which the involved stakeholders will be held. The coordinator chairs the meeting.
In this meeting, the product map author(s) is(are) supposed to present the material, without influencing the
reviewers into making the same logical errors as he did. The reviewers can discuss the documentation in
order to make suggestions where the material seems flawed or has potential for extension. If, during the
presentation, things are not clear enough, team members are allowed to ask questions in order to clarify aspects of the
presented material.
Reviewers must observe specific elements of the product map, including aspects of variability, relationships, etc,
according to the checklist provided. They must check the specification for problems, inaccuracies,
ambiguities and omissions.
It is critical that the group remains focused on the task they are involved with. The coordinator can help in this
process by restraining unnecessary discussions and lead the group in the right direction. Moreover, the Coordinator
should resolve disagreements when the team can not reach a consensus.
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Report the findings
After conducting the walthrough, all attendees must decide whether to accept/reject modifications in the artifact as
well as accept/reject the overall artifact. It will base the walkthrough report to be then produced.
A detailed report (Validation Report), including information regarding what was reviewed,
who reviewed, and what are the findings of the review is generated. It lists items of
concern regarding the requirements and use cases, i.e. problem areas within the product and corrections to be
made.
The Validation Report Template is available in Guidance folder.
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Key Considerations
The major purpose here is to find defects. However, there may be times when participants drift from the main purpose.
The review leader, i.e. the moderator, needs to prevent this from happening and ensure that the walkthrough
focuses on the defects or weaknesses rather than identifying fixes or resolutions.
It is recommended to apply a time-box mode for the walkthrough. This will be helpful to avoid time wasting and/or
effectiveness loss.
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