12^th Australian Workshop on Requirements Engineering

8.45

Arrival & Reception

9:00

Keynote

• The Forgotten People of Requirements Engineering (Professor Paul Swatman, Co-Director, InSyL Laboratory, University of South Australia)

10:15

-

10:30

Coffee break

10:30

• Uncovering Information Centres in Requirements Traceability Networks (I. Omoronyia, G. Sindre and T. Stalhane.) Presentation Slides
• Managing Conflicts among Non-Functional Requirements (D. Mairiza, D. Zowghi and N. Nurmuliani) Presentation Slides
• Investigating the Cost of User Requirements Change within Two Agile Software Development Projects (P. Clutterbuck) Presentation Slides

• Quality Requirements: Trade-off Analysis of Benefit and Cost (R. B. Svensson) Presentation Slides
• Non-functional Requirements - going beyond the label (A. McGlade) Presentation Slides
• Visualising Requirements - the role of creativity in the requirements gathering process (M. Eagleton, T. Chuang) Presentation Slides

• A Visualization Technique for Requirements-Related Defect Prevention – Doing it Right the First Time (P. Shanthakumar, O. Creighton and B. Palyagar) Presentation Slides
• Requirements Engineering Best Practices: An Analysis (S. Hasan)

Coffee break

• What can Universities do to train better Business Analysts for Industry? Panellists: A. McGlade, M. Eagleton, D Zowghi & J. Armarego)

Closing and Departure

• The Pumphouse — 6:30 PM for 7:00 PM Start (17 Little Pier Street, Darling Harbour, located next to the Entertainment Centre)

More About the Keynote Address

The Forgotten People of Requirements Engineering
  Professor Paul Swatman
  Co-Director, InSyL Laboratory
  University of South Australia
  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Abstract

The requirements engineering literature – both professional and academic – and the educational programmes of our Universities tend to focus on modelling and process.  As a discipline, we care about the efficient, effective and accurate collection and modelling of systems requirements, the evolution of our understanding of those requirements (themselves evolving) over time and our ability to communicate this understanding clearly both to our clients (for validation) and to those who will build systems.

In essence, then, our goal is the ability to build systems which are refinements, not just of our specifications (which may, in principle, have formal representation), but of user requirements (which may not).

The work of my team, especially over the last five years, has however begun to identify another aspect of requirements engineering as being of equivalent significance – the human aspect.  The human aspect of requirements engineering has not been entirely absent from discussions at the Australian Workshops on Requirements Engineering, of course – researchers in and practitioners of Information Systems Analysis have always been a part of the series’ catchment target.  Nonetheless, except in the case of human computer interfaces, there has been little emphasis on “the individual”.

It has only recently begun to be clear to us that two distinct aspects of our work – the nature of the requirements engineering team; and human responses to organisational change – are strongly connected.

In this talk, Paul will introduce some of the results from both projects and build a picture of how we are now beginning to conceptualise both Requirements Engineers and the individuals whose lives are affected by our work.