How can we solve the requirements engineering methods orthogonal ontology puzzle?

This session will frame a community effort to organize the plethora of requirements engineering methods and approaches into an ontology. Such a structure would provide an opportunity to identify gaps and to improve the interfaces between these methods and approaches. Crowdsourcing the validation of such an ontology would facilitate its application across different system types and application domains. Those attending this session should expect to participate in an interactive and engaging discussion.

Biography

Alistair Mavin (Mav) is an independent requirements specialist based in the UK. Mav worked as a requirements specialist at Rolls-Royce PLC for 14 years. He has carried out requirements engineering projects in a range of industries including defence, aerospace, rail, automotive, industrial plant design and software systems. He is the lead author of EARS and EARS+ and has experience in the development and delivery of requirements engineering training and in innovation and creativity support. Mav has published many papers on requirements and systems engineering. He was Industry Chair for RE13 and Industry Laboratory Chair for RE14 and is a member of the IEEE “RE” conference series Industry Committee. Mav is a member of IEEE, INCOSE, the British Computer Society (BSC) and the BCS Requirements Engineering Specialist Group committee and is a chartered engineer.

Requirements Analysis and Verification for the Thirty Meter Telescope with OpenMBEE and the OpenSE Cookbook

This talk focuses on leveraging the Executable System Engineering Method (ESEM) which automates requirements verification (e.g. power and mass budget margins and duration analysis of operational modes) using executable SysML models. It demonstrates how the ESEM is applied in conjunction with OpenMBEE (an open source Model Based Engineering Environment) to create key engineering products (e.g. operational concept document) and specify, analyze, and verify requirements of the Alignment and Phasing System (APS) and the Narrow Field Infrared Adaptive Optics System (NFIRAOS) within the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project. TMT is under development by the TMT International Observatory (TIO).

Biography

Robert Karban is a Project Systems Engineer in the Systems Engineering and Formulation Division at NASA/JPL. Robert leads the team providing the Systems Environment (based on OpenMBEE) to JPL users, and applies modeling on the Thirty Meter Telescope project. Prior to that, he developed control and instrumentation systems for large telescopes at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), applying model driven technology, and for particle accelerators at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Robert is a Challenge team lead of INCOSE's MBSE Initiative, an OMG certified SysML professional, and co-chair of the OMG's revision task force for SysML. He started his career at Siemens Medical Devices developing System Software and received is M.S. in Computer Science from the Technical University of Vienna/Austria.

RE in Regulated Industries: Tamed Horse or Hidden Champion?

Regulated industries can be a challenging field when it comes to requirements engineering, not to mention creativity in requirements engineering. This talk addresses the question whether working as an requirements engineer in a regulated industry, such as medical device manufacturing, means working as a tamed horse with strict boundaries and no room for improvement. Or does this position come with benefits that can’t be seen at first sight? How do advanced standards and strict guidelines open up new paths for cooperation, creativity and higher quality in resulting products? We’ll discuss approaches, techniques and tools.

Biography

Franziska Herrmann has been working as a human factors engineer in high-risk organizations (medical devices and aviation) since 2011 and has held active parts in the development of various medical devices and their regulatory market approval. She is a senior requirements engineer and creates information architectures for complex software systems. She focusses on user experience and usability, while bridging the gap in cross-functional development teams through system specification and quality assurance.

Requirements collection and business process optimization for the development of an information system to replace a legacy system.

The Volkswagen Group operates an approximately 15-year-old back-end IT system, which shows symptoms of a legacy system (outdated process and IT documentation, error-prone, time-consuming maintenance, etc.) and that has to be replaced by a successor system. The presentation will first of all present the initial situation and the special challenges in the context of very large and over years grown legacy systems. In the second part of the presentation, the approach is presented in which (a) the requirements of the users and interface partners on the successor system and (b) the actually practiced as-is process were recorded with the help of interviews. In the third part, we discuss how the recorded requirements had been evaluated against the business process vision, possibly detailed, grouped and prioritized. In conclusion, problems and positive findings of the applied approach are summarized. In particular, we note that many pseudo-requirements had been captured and sometimes even implemented, and that some core requirements can only be captured based on acquired domain knowledge and target business process vision and not through interviews.

Challenges in managing quality requirements in industry context and how to overcome them

Communication/ telecommunication technology business sector is a highly competitive domain where complex solutions are developed for unique customers under constant time pressure. Managing requirements and developing products of high quality in such environment is a quite demanding task. To succeed in such a context, it is necessary to constantly seek means to overcome identified challenges. This talk provides some insights for requirements management in industry.

Biography

Sanja Aaramaa is RF Platforms DU Operations Owner at Nokia Mobile Networks (MN). In this position, she is responsible for planning and executing projects related to R&D tools and processes, IT and cloud environment within RF Platforms. The objective of these projects is to ensure that MN level decisions on IT & tool roadmaps, harmonisation targets as well as tool strategies are deployed in RF Platforms. Respectively she provides DU feedback and tool related requirements towards relevant MN level bodies and forums. She got her PhD in 2017 from Information Processing Science and MSc in 2008 from Mathematics, the University of Oulu. She has conducted empirical research since 2008 in several publicly funded (ITEA, Business Finland, H2020) research projects in close collaboration with industry. Currently she is the H2020 Q-Rapids Project Manager for Nokia.

A pragmatic view from a practical perspective

What is a requirement engineer expected to deliver in context of software development within a large corporation? This contribution addresses the intersection of requirements engineering and design. From a practical point of view there are three main areas where requirements can originate from. These are business, technology and people. Requirements engineering is indisputably strong in eliciting and articulating requirements. However, these three areas of origin are not equally accounted for in the process of engineering requirements. Within Deutsche Bahn Group we therefore elaborated and discussed several problem hypotheses relating to the requirements process. We identified 13 critical issues and for each one a golden rule. We also compared the existing practice of requirements engineering with the established human centered design practice in context of an internal IT provider. Here again the fact came to light clearly that requirements themselves do not create a solution. A conceptional design is required to mediate the transformation from requirements to a solution. Here we see in the context of agile development some stumbling blocks that should be encountered. When we talk about design, we realize that design is a frayed term. In light of contemporary trends towards digital transformation we find that the purpose of design requires some re-shaping. Design problems can be referred to as “wicked problems” according to Horst Rittel. To tackle wicked design problems an integrated mindset of design and engineering is very useful. Equally important is the practice of design as a craft as well as design as a mindset. Several examples from inside Deutsche Bahn are described to illustrate such an integrated mindset. Returning to the intersection of requirements engineering and design it seems that from a practical perspective it is time for a new integrated approach that can be located in the emerging discourse of “digital design”. A discourse that has been started by the German Association for IT, Telecommunications and New Media and picked up the International Requirements Engineering Board, as well as the German Usability Professionals Association.

Biography

David Gilbert has worked in various operational and strategic Digital Design roles since 2007. Until 2015, he worked for various design agencies such as Scholz & Volkmer, Pixelpark, Mutabor or SinnerSchrader. The projects he has worked in have received over 25 international and national design awards. - Since 2015 he is working in the IT department of the Deutsche Bahn Group, where he holds the role of Chief Architect User Experience at the intersection of classic system-oriented and user-oriented software conception. From 2011 - 2016, he was a lecturer in UX Design at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, and has published various contributions to the topics of strategic UX design and digital design. He is a member of the IREB working group "Digital Design", deputy chairman of the Bitkom "Digital Design" working group as well as he is a member of the "Designforum Digital Experience" of the German Design Council.

Lead Customer Driven Requirement Engineering

In agile software development projects requirements engineering is often a pain point. The understanding of customers and software developers collide, when go live comes near. So what to do, to ensure a proper requirements engineering that fits agile development as well as end customer needs? - A practical analysis on two approaches.

How to derive test cases from UML requirements models

Both, requirements and test cases, describe a system's behaviour. So, it should be simple to derive test cases from activity diagrams or state diagrams. In this mini-tutorial, you will derive test cases manually from requirements diagrams. Then, results from student experiments are presented and discussed. Like this, you learn about the rules and pitfalls of this task.

Biography

Andrea Herrmann is a freelance trainer and consultant in Software Engineering since 2012. She has more than 20 years of work experience in practice and in research. She wrote over 100 publications, regularly speaks at conferences, associate member at IREB, co-author of syllabus and handbook for the CPRE Advanced Level in Requirements Management.

Writing better requirements with EARS

System requirements are usually written in Natural Language (NL), often by untrained authors. Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax (EARS) is a notation that gently constrains NL requirements to add rigour whilst retaining the inherent readability of text. It has proved popular with practitioners because it is lightweight, there is little training overhead, no specialist tool is required and the resultant requirements are easy to read. EARS has been shown to drastically reduce the main problems typically associated with NL requirements. It is especially effective for requirements authors who have to write requirements in English, but whose first language is not English. EARS is widely used in academia and in a range of industries worldwide. This mini tutorial introduces the EARS notation, provides worked examples and enables attendees to practice the notation with exercises.

Biography

Alistair Mavin (Mav) is an independent requirements specialist based in the UK. Mav worked as a requirements specialist at Rolls-Royce PLC for 14 years. He has carried out requirements engineering projects in a range of industries including defence, aerospace, rail, automotive, industrial plant design and software systems. He is the lead author of EARS and EARS+ and has experience in the development and delivery of requirements engineering training and in innovation and creativity support. Mav has published many papers on requirements and systems engineering. He was Industry Chair for RE13 and Industry Laboratory Chair for RE14 and is a member of the IEEE “RE” conference series Industry Committee. Mav is a member of IEEE, INCOSE, the British Computer Society (BSC) and the BCS Requirements Engineering Specialist Group committee and is a chartered engineer.