Logo

Entity Flaw Type

Written March 3, 2023 by Kendra Dezenosky

An entity is any separate and identifiable object. It can refer to a number of different categories but often refers to individuals, organizations, locations, or even smaller components or bits of data considered significant  [1].

For example, consider the following sentence:

    Bob and Sandra work for Microsoft in California.

The entities within that sentence are:

  • Bob
  • Sandra
  • Microsoft
  • California

Entities are an essential part of a requirement. They give the sentence its value through subjects as well as the relationships between them. Requiremint will highlight either too many or the absence of entities in the following categories:

  • People
  • Organizations
  • Locations
  • Quantities

It is important to understand and be aware of how entities interact with one another in order to gain better clarity of the requirement as well as eliminate circular dependencies and conflicting messaging.

A good requirement follows the INVEST principle, which describes a set of criteria against which a requirement is evaluated to determine its quality [2]. Specifically, a requirement with no entities works against the “E” in INVEST, which stands for Estimable. If a requirement has no entities it indicates that the level of detail is inadequate and a valid estimate of complexity cannot be assessed. Alternatively, a requirement with too many entities works against the “S” in INVEST, which stands for Small. Too many entities indicates that there may be too much detail and the scope of the requirement may be too large. It is recommended that requirements of this caliber be split into separate and more manageable requirements.

References

[1] “Entity”, Technopedia, 17-01-2014. [Online]. Available:  https://www.techopedia.com/definition/14360/entity-computing#:~:text=It refers to individuals' organizations,systems design and other arenas. [Accessed: 03-Mar-2023].

[2] “What Does Agile INVEST stand for?”, Wrike. [Online]. Available:  https://www.wrike.com/agile-guide/faq/what-does-agile-invest-stand-for/. [Accessed: 03-Mar-2023].