REFSQ 2019 will be the 25th edition in the REFSQ series!
In order to celebrate celebrate a quarter of a century of inspiring research results, innovative ideas and inspiring discussions the conference programme will feature a number of celebration sessions with talks from REFSQ pioneers. Anthony Finkelstein
University College London
Speaking Truth to Power
I reflect on the role of a scientific adviser in government. I will give an account of: how to build applied research programmes that have ‘impact’; how to provide strategic advice on technology and the challenges of establishing technical leadership and delivering innovation; and, I will talk about how to leverage multi-disciplinary input to solve problems in complex multi-stakeholder organisations. I will focus on what software engineering discipline can bring and what we still need to do as a research community.
Biography
Anthony Finkelstein is a Professor of Software Engineering at UCL. He was formerly Dean of UCL Engineering and prior to that Head of Computer Science. He is currently HM Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security. Anthony was a founder Director of the Alan Turing Institute and a member of EPSRC Council. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and has been awarded a CBE for services to computer science and engineering.
Prof. Dr. Kevin T Ryan
University of Limerick
Do we still require RE?
Recent developments in Software Engineering, such as Agile Methods, Artificial Intelligence and Search Based SE have led some people to dismiss RE as 'no longer relevant'. Ultimately, the argument goes, machines will surpass human intelligence and will be able to establish their own requirements. These arguments are baseless for a number of reasons; scientific, social and ultimately philosophical. Worse, they ignore the hard won lessons of nearly 30 years of RE research. In fact the more complex and software dependent our society becomes, the more we will need appropriate RE.
Biography
Professor Kevin Ryan is emeritus Professor of Information Technology at the University of Limerick (UL) and was founding Director of Lero - the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre. (www.lero.ie). Kevin holds degrees of BA (Maths & Economics), BAI (Engineering) and PhD (Computer Science) from Trinity College Dublin and is a Fellow of both the Irish Computer Society and the Institute of Engineers of Ireland. Over the past 40 years he has lectured and researched on software topics in universities and industry in Ireland, the UK, the USA, Africa and Sweden. He is a founding member of the IFIP Working Group 2.9 (Requirements Engineering) and chaired it for 6 years. He has been a director of a number of start-up software companies.
Peter Peters
McKinsey&Company
Requirements Management in the “Agile World” – a disappearing act?
As many companies move to agile methods to accelerate and improve their software development processes, requirements management often becomes an iterative, collaborative and therefore often implicit act. Is this talk we will outline the advantages and problems of this change from a practitioners perspective by addressing the implications on requirements quality, documentation and the management of requirements along the software lifecycle.
Biography
Peter Peters is a Partner at McKinsey&Company. He consults industrial companies around the world on all topics of IT management and business digitization for 20 years. He holds a diploma in computer science from the University of Dortmund und a doctorate in computer science from the Technical University of Aachen. He is one of the founding members of REFSQ.