NEW DELHI: In a survey conducted by Borland Software Corporation , nearly 250 quality assurance professionals say – 'poorly defined or mismanaged requirements and inadequate time for proper testing are the two biggest problems they are grappling with today.'

Borland's "Man on the Street" poll, conducted at the recent STARWEST conference in Anaheim, Calif., also revealed that 64 percent of respondents believe that requirements-based testing is the answer to better quality software.

When asked to weigh in on the biggest problems with software quality, 43 percent of respondents cited an issue with requirements being wrong from the start, and 25 percent opined that QA isn't given enough time to test properly, indicating the importance of creating tighter alignment across teams.

Lack of communication about changes to requirements and the ability to measure the impact of those changes on testing processes were also cited as issues. In fact, 62 percent of respondents stated they could be driving a new Mercedes or retired if they had a dollar for every time they had to rewrite a test case because requirements changes weren't effectively communicated.

"Quality professionals deal with tough challenges and strict deadlines, and the fact that they're telling us that requirements have such a great impact on their jobs reinforces the need for a process that aligns all teams in development and addresses quality from day one," said Brad Johnson, director of product marketing at Borland. "Building clear, testable requirements and infusing testing best practices earlier in development can alleviate the pressure on strapped QA teams – and significantly boost the quality of finished applications."

Borland's Lifecycle Quality Management (LQM) addresses quality by helping customers institutionalize a more proactive and preventative approach to software quality by ensuring quality is built into software at the very point of project definition, tested earlier and more often and traced throughout every phase of the application lifecycle.

When given the chance to "free form" answers to the question "when is your job the most challenging," many respondents cited poor communication between analysts, developers and testers as their chief concern. Others noted that, "it is often the case that development can slip on their timelines, but testing cannot."

All was not negative though. When asked what had the most positive impact on their job, many individuals cited test process improvement and CIO support. The majority of respondents – 62 percent – cited that test/QA automation technologies as having the most positive impact while agile methodologies took a much lower second place at 14 percent of respondents.

Read more about Borland's LQM solution