Requirement check everywhere with one click

There are now more and more tools for checking requirements - I recently mentioned the open source library Vale. As a by-product of a customer project, I have developed a simple Vale-based quality check. You can now activate it anywhere with one click via a web browser extension. It works in Confluence, Jama or Polarion.

I will explain below which rules are supported and how you can use the checker.

How it works

It is very easy to use: Simply open any website / web app, click the icon and the requirements to be checked are highlighted in gray. As soon as the check is complete, the text is highlighted in green (no problem) or red, with error markers. The following 13-second video shows how it works in Confluence:

The system shown is Semianta quality assistant for product development that I helped to develop. About Semiant I have in this blog already written a lot. Semiant uses a web browser extension as a user interface. This makes it possible to become active in any web application. Confluence was shown in the video. But the check also works in Polarion, DOORS Next, Jama Connect, Codebeamer and almost all other websites and web-based tools.

The functionality shown here is part of the free Semiant extension, which is available in the Chrome Storebut currently only for Chrome and Edge.

Without AI, but still useful

The library Vale I have already described in this blog. Vale uses its own syntax to define validation rules. As the term "rule" implies, Vale does not use AI. However, Vale can use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to classify individual tokens, for example as a predicate or object.

Activated rules

The following rules are activated in the freely accessible system at the time of publication. This can of course change over time. In particular, these are standard rules of the Vale project. The rules were not developed specifically for requirements. The rules are designed for the English language. Some are simple, others are quite complex:

• Cliches: Certain phrases are cautioned, such as "a far cry" or "in a nutshell"
• Illusions: Word repetition.
• PassivePassive records.
• So: A sentence begins with "So"
• ThereIs: At the beginning of a sentence, "There is", "There are", etc. is prohibited.
• Adverbs: A list of non-recommended adverbs such as "quickly" or "rarely".
• Contractions: Compounds should be used as "aren't" instead of "are not".
• DateOrderTo avoid confusion, months must be written out in letters.
• Ellipses: Three points: ...
• Ordinal: Enumerations such as "Secondly" should not have an "-ly".
• OxfordComma: In enumerations, a comma before "and".
• SemicolonA semicolon indicates a complex sentence and should not be used.
• SentenceLength: Sentences longer than 30 words.
• SuspendedAbbreviation for enumeration with hyphen
• WordinessSimplifications with concrete suggestions, e.g. "always" instead of "at all times".

There are many more rules in the Vale library. However, these are the ones that I consider useful for the requirements check. All rules are in the Vale repository to find.

Own rules for the requirements check

The notation for rules is quite simple. In particular, it is not rocket science to create rules for the German language.

The simplest are lists of words, such as weak words. In principle, it is also possible to Record templates to check. However, this is where Vale reaches its limits. After all, the task is to find errors when using templates. This in turn means that we have to knit our logic in such a way that errors are recognized.

An example: A successful template is the format for user stories: "As an , I want so that ". A rule could match the first part and note the missing benefit as an error. It is already clear here that it can be tedious.

For a really well-functioning system, several approaches usually have to be combined, so Vale alone is not necessarily enough.

Semiant installation

If you would like to try Semiant with Vale, you can Semiant from the Chrome Store install. You must create an account to use it.

After logging in the icon can be made permanently visible and Semiant can be configured (Semiant Icon > Options). In particular, I recommend setting Vale as the default (and optionally deactivating the other services):

And finally: Semiant is still in beta. There are a number of usability improvements that we are working on. Stay tuned!

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash