Welcome to Arbiter

Arbiter is a requirements gathering and acceptance testing tool for project managers and web developers, to help ease client interaction.

Read an overview of the design goals of Arbiter.

See the current Arbiter release plan.


What is it?

Arbiter is a requirements gathering and project sign off tool. It was first described at SitePoint Forums.

How does it work?

The project specification can be defined in word processor format as you would normally. By adding some special items, such as titled bulleted lists and highlighted text items, both a test suite and glossary can be written right into the spec. The Arbiter server will parse these documents and run the tests, reporting the results into the documents themselves. This allows the client to see project process.

It also allows the developers, sitting next to the client, to add concrete executable examples of the use cases. This adds clarity and helps to settle disputes over required functionality. Using the glossary, developers can signal to the client that concepts are not well understood. Tests can be marked pending if a document contains unexplained glossary items.