Software Teamwork: Taking Ownership for Success
In Search of Excellent Requirements
Requirements Writing Workshop
Exploring User Requirements with Use Cases
Inspections and Peer Reviews
Project Management: The Team Approach
Patterns in Project Success, Patterns in Project Failure
Estimation: Size Does Matter!
Quality Assurance and Testing: Ship a Great Product!
Relationship Awareness with the SDI

All of our workshops are available onsite - please contact us for details!

In Search of Excellent Requirements

"I was very impressed with your class. It is the first class I have been to in a long time that actually gave us tools to use. Something we can take away and actually apply in real life. I've already started taking my requirements 'wish list' and applying some of the techniques shown in class. I can't thank you enough for these tools." - Darla J. Braniff, System Administrator

"Thank you for an excellent Requirements class. I thoroughly enjoyed the last two days and I gathered many valuable take-aways from it. Excellent job!" - Steve Blanchard, Business Analyst  

"After class this week, I told you this course was better than when I attended a few years ago. Just wanted to make sure I didn't give the wrong impression: the class 3 years ago was excellent, that's why I signed up again." – Bill Ireland, Contracts Consultant 

 "Great course, it helped me see that we are not alone in the challenges we face, and gave me the tools to improve how we collect and handle requirements." – Kevin Mueller, Navarik

 "This class should be taught to anyone who may be involved in projects. Invaluable!!! I really appreciated the open dialog and the ability to share experiences and gain knowledge from my counterparts" – Kathy Costello, Project Manager, Washington State

"My staff are going to groan as we work together to become more disciplined – they avoid doing documentation but are thrilled when they benefit from it being done. You’ve provided a basis for us to move forward in building a culture including requirements analysis as part of our best-practices toolkit." - June Clark, Northern Health Authority

"The requirements prioritization portion was especially interesting. I can use this next week with a customer directly." - Mike Aksmanovic, MDSI Mobile Data Solutions Inc

"I'll go find out what they want, and the rest of you start coding." This caption from a cartoon is uncomfortably close to the way some software organizations still treat the requirements specification process. Contemporary definitions of "quality" include the concepts of both meeting stated specifications and satisfying the actual customer requirements, which sadly are not always the same thing. Converging these two components into a unified vision of the final product is the linchpin of successful software development.

This two-day workshop will describe dozens of tested methods that can help any organization improve the way it elicits, analyzes, documents, validates, and manages software requirements. Characteristics of excellent requirements statement and requirements specifications are presented and used to evaluate some sample functional requirements.

The basic concepts of requirements management will be described as well as practical methods for managing changes to these requirements. These techniques can reduce project risk by improving the quality and control of the software requirements, thereby increasing the likelihood of a successfully completed project.

This workshop will emphasize

• Creating an effective customer-developer partnership
• Customer involvement through a "product champion" model
• Roles and descriptions of key contributors to requirements
• Application of use cases for defining user needs and system functions
• Writing software requirements specifications using a standard template
• Constructing dialog maps to model user interfaces, as well as other analysis models
• Use of prototypes to clarify and refine user needs
• Use of peer reviews and inspections to find requirements errors

Tools to take away

• Over 20 different techniques you can apply as warranted on your projects
• Word-based templates for a Vision and Scope document, Use-case Document and Software Requirements Specification
• Decision support spreadsheets for prioritizing requirements and identifying quality attributes
• Checklists, worksheets and whitepapers to reinforce elements of the course
• Ongoing support for clarification of issues raised in the course from the instructor

Over 1 Meg of soft-copy information is made available at the end of the workshop for participants.

A blend of lecture, class discussion, and group discussions on requirements problems and solutions, as well as practice sessions will be utilized. A real-world project is used to thread the exercises together and allow focus on the techniques throughout the course. Practice sessions will especially give attendees some experience in working with use cases, drawing a dialog map, reviewing a requirements specification, writing good requirements, and writing an action plan to improve their group's requirements practices.

Audience

This workshop will be useful to software engineers, managers, requirements analysts, user representatives, and anyone else engaged in gathering, documenting, analyzing, or managing customer requirements for software applications.

Format

Blend of lecture, class discussion, group discussions on requirements problems and solutions, and practice sessions. Practice sessions give attendees some experience in working with use cases, drawing a dialog map, reviewing requirements, and writing an action plan to improve their group’s requirements practices.

We provide a diagnostic of current requirements practices that all participants complete prior to the workshop. This serves to introduce topics that will be covered in the session, and helps the instructor understand where to emphasize content in the workshop.

Participants get a complete snapshot of the results (statistically anonymous, of course), as well as feedback on where the group lies relative to others that have taken the diagnostic in the past.

Outline

Introduction to Requirements Engineering

Please contact us for more information regarding this offering.

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