Instructors

Neil Maiden, City University
Suzanne Robertson, Atlantic Systems Guild
James Robertson, Atlantic Systems Guild

Abstract

Requirements is too often seen as a "stenographer's task", one where the requirements engineer passively listens and records while the stakeholders state their needs. However, this approach relies on stakeholders knowing what they need, and what they want. Experience tells us that except for rare visionaries, people do not know what they want until they see it. Many of the useful products that we take for granted today, did not come about from the stakeholders' imagination, but from an invention. In this tutorial we explain and illustrate how to use creative techniques to invent requirements that result in more useful, usable and competitive products. We provide a guide for invention, and show participants how to use this guide to invent innovative requirements for a familiar system. Attendees will be made aware of the need for creativity and invention in requirements processes, learn how to introduce and apply creativity techniques in requirements and design processes, know how to integrate results into mainstream development processes such as RUP/UML, and understand how to manage their own creativity processes.

Biographies

Neil Maiden is Professor of Systems Engineering and Head of the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design, an independent research department in City University's School of Informatics. He has been directing inter-disciplinary research in requirements engineering for 15 years and has worked on numerous EPSRC- and EU-funded research projects including SIMP, NATURE, CREWS, BANKSEC and SeCSE. He has published over 110 peer-reviewed papers in journals, conferences and workshops. He is the Editor of the IEEE Software's Requirements column.

Suzanne Robertson has more than 30 years experience in systems specification and building. Her current work includes research and consulting on stakeholders' rights and responsibilities, the specification and reuse of requirements and techniques for assessing requirement specifications. In 1983 Suzanne co-founded the Atlantic Systems Guild, a think-tank for system development techniques. She is a member of IEEE and the Australian Computer Society. She is the former editor of the Requirements column in IEEE Software.

James Robertson is a leading proponent of the principle of introducing creativity into the requirements process. His controversial article "Eureka: Why Analysts Should Invent Requirements" in IEEE Software, July 2002, has been widely quoted and discussed. Before becoming a systems engineer, James trained as an architect and his experience in that profession provides inspiration for his work on innovation and creativity. He is co-author of Mastering the Requirements Process, which introduced the Volere requirements techniques, and Requirements-led Project Management - Discovering David's Slingshot. He is also a principal and founder of The Atlantic Systems Guild, a think tank known for its research into new systems engineering techniques.