EventMar2009
From Requirements Engineering Specialist Group
Past Event
Jump to comments on this event
Innovation, Creativity and their Role in Business Requirements
Contact Rachel Browning.
Date 2-5pm, 30 March 2009
Venue Centre for HCI Design, City University, London.
Details
Writing requirements is often seen as a "stenographer's task" - one where the requirements engineer passively records the stakeholders' needs. However, this approach relies on stakeholders knowing what they need, and what they want. Experience tells us that except for rare visionaries, people cannot 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' requests, but from invention and innovation. The mobile phone, text messaging, the World Wide Web and many, many others are innovations, often built from existing components. Commentators are increasingly in agreement that the businesses which will thrive in the next decade will be those that make innovation a regular part of their development process.
In this tutorial we explain how to use creative and innovative techniques to bring about more useful, usable and competitive products. We provide examples and illustrations from our experience in air traffic management and automotive engineering. We provide a guide for innovation, and show participants how it is used. Finally, we present some examples of software support tools that can be used to stimulate creativity in the context of the requirements process.
Speakers
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. His latest book, co-authored with his fellow principals of the Atlantic Systems Guild, is Adrenaline Junkies & Template Zombies - Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior
Neil Maiden is Professor of Systems Engineering and Head of the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design at City University. 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, SeCSE, APOSDLE and TRACEBACK. He has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers in journals, conferences and workshops. He is the Editor of the IEEE Software's Requirements column.
Registration
Attendance at this half-day tutorial will cost £40 (inc. VAT), and numbers will be limited. To register, please visit the BCS event registration page:
www.bcs.org/events/registration
Please contact Rachel browning if you have any queries concerning registration:
Rachel Browning MBCS
Specialist Groups
BCS First Floor, Block D, North Star House, North Star Avenue, Swindon SN2 1FA
tel +44(0)1793417416 / fax +44(0)1793417444
rachel.browning@hq.bcs.org.uk
Comments
This was my first opportunity to hear James Robertson and Neil Maiden and as anticipated I found the session both enjoyable and useful. I was surprised that more people had not taken the opportunity to attend.