Austin Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) Meeting July 12, 2007

Tough Requirements Problems and Proven Solutions

Everyone knows that if you don’t get the requirements right, you waste lots of time and effort building something that doesn’t meet the customer’s needs. Even after decades of documenting and teaching best practices, we still have tough problems in search of solutions that really work.

This month’s meeting brings together several experts in the field to talk about tough requirements problems they’ve each faced, and solutions they found to work. After talking through their examples, they will field questions from you to see if they’ve encountered something similar, and how they dealt with them.

Please bring your toughest requirements problem and join us to interact with:

· Linda Shafer, a 40-year veteran of the software engineering industry, who has worked for IBM, Motorola, the State of Texas and The University of Texas. She will focus on the human element in capturing and expressing requirements, a set of skills that sometimes eludes software developers.

· Ian Buchanan, a key architect of the Together tools while at TogetherSoft for many years and now a product manager at Borland. He will discuss tough problems helped (or caused) by using visual modeling tools, as well as some interesting challenges with decision-making when handling agile development requirements with user stories.

· Tony Chen, President of Seilevel in Austin, who has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies on requirements handling and was instrumental in defining the methods used at Seilevel. He will consider requirements challenges that have been solved with use-case approaches.

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Cost: Attendance is free and open to all technology professionals.

Official Website: http://www.austin-spin.org