Articles

Gil Regev has been a researcher at EPFL since 1997 in the fields of enterprise information systems, requirements engineering, change management and knowledge management. Since 2008 he is also manager and consultant at Itecor, a boutique consultancy firm. Previously Gil developed software for computer peripherals at Logitech, in Switzerland and California.

• A General Systems Thinking Perspective on the CPRE

Alain Wegmann is a full professor at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences, EPFL, Switzerland. He worked 14 years for Logitech (Switzerland, Taiwan, US) in positions ranging from software developer, IS manager, manufacturing engineering to VP of engineering and OEM marketing before joining the EPFL in 1997. His teaching, consulting and research are in the fields of enterprise architecture, requirements engineering and service engineering.

• A General Systems Thinking Perspective on the CPRE

Olivier Hayard has been a consultant and in charge of IT and Knowledge Management at Itecor, a boutique consultancy firm, since 1993. Olivier’s main interests are business analysis and requirements management, as practitioner, trainer and researcher.

• A General Systems Thinking Perspective on the CPRE

After studying physics in Germany and New Zealand, Gunnar Harde worked as software engineer, later as IT consultant and project manager for IT and business consultancies and research institutes. Since 2007 he is responsible for the development of several IT systems of the Group Quality Assurance at Volkswagen and shapes the cooperation between IT and business department strategically and methodically. Harde is Certified Scrum Product Owner and expert in agile management.

• Managing the Invisible
• Agility and Obligation
• Agility and Obligation

After studying physics in Germany and New Zealand, Gunnar Harde worked as software engineer, later as IT consultant and project manager for IT and business consultancies and research institutes. Since 2007 he is responsible for the development of several IT systems of the Group Quality Assurance at Volkswagen and shapes the cooperation between IT and business department strategically and methodically. Harde is Certified Scrum Product Owner and expert in agile management.

• Managing the Invisible
• Agility and Obligation
• Agility and Obligation

Harry M. Sneed has a Master’s Degree in Information Sciences from the University of Maryland, 1969. He has been working in the IT field since 1967 when he started as a FORTRAN programmer for the US Navy Department. He migrated to Germany in 1971 and worked first for the Federal University Administration and then for Siemens in the database area. In 1978 he set up the first commercial software test laboratory in Budapest. There he developed the first German requirements engineering tool SoftSpec in 1982. That tool was used to document the requirements in many large German organizations, including BMW, Bertelsmann, Thyssen Steel and the German Railways. That tool was used not only to collect and store the requirements on the mainframe, but also to check the completeness and consistency of the requirements, as well as to generate a system design.

At the end of the 1980’s Sneed moved over to the field of reverse and reengineering and became involved in projects throughout Europe. In 2009 he received the Stevens Award from the IEEE Computer Society for his pioneering achievements in that field. He conducts courses at two technical colleges and two universities. He has published over 400 technical articles and written 23 books on the subjects of software testing, maintenance, migration and measurement. His work in requirement engineering is mainly in connection with reverse engineering, change management and test, three areas in which he still works as freelance consultant.

• Tracing Change Requests
• Automated Quality Assurance

Jason Hansen obtained a BS in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Tech. He left the work force in 2005 to focus on raising an adopted special needs daughter. In 2015, he decided to return to school and obtained his AAAS in Network Admin. He is working as a tutor at GRCC while pursuing a Master’s Degree in Computer Software Engineering at GVSU.

• Challenges in the elicitation and determination of precise requirements from animal stakeholders

Prof. Dr. Salinesi is an active academic who teaches topics in relation with software design such as Requirements Engineering, and Software Product Lines. He was involved in many funded research projects (FP4, FP5, H2020, ANR) and was the leader for collaborations and consultancy works for various companies such as France Télécom, SNCF, Renault, EDF or REXEL). He has been General Chair of SPLC, CAiSE, REFSQ international conferences, and was Organizing Chair of the 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering.

At IREB, Prof Salinesi has acted for 2 mandates as Second Chair of the Executive Committee. He is now Full Member, member of the Editorial Board, and WG Member.

• Conversation with an Artificial Intelligence

Priyank Arora is a Senior Business Analyst working in the digital IT space for 12+ years. He is a CBAP certified professional with a Core Credential in Business Analytics from Harvard Business School. He works on large scale digital transformation projects for the world’s leading travel group, where he helped to transition the requirement engineering processes from traditional to Agile working methodologies. He was also involved with a machine learning initiative within his organisation and is a data science enthusiast with an interest in applying analytical thinking and decision automation for business growth.

• Data Science – the expanding frontier for Business Analysts

Ravishankar is a consultant with Financial Services division of Capgemini Financial Services with an overall experience of 13 years in the Banking and Financial Service sector. He has managed million dollar projects for Global Banking and Insurance companies and has advised clients in areas of Financial Risk & Regulation, Data Management, Analytics, Product Development and day -to-day operations.
He is a certified in Financial Risk Management (FRM), Project Management (PMP) and Data Mining (University of California) .In his spare time he enjoys conducting classes in Project Management and Business Analysis.

• Evolving and Improving the Requirements Approach to Big Data Projects

For more than twenty years, Rainer Grau has accompanied companies on their way enterprise agility. He supports companies in their efforts to continuously develop and create sustainable value for customers and employees. For him, it is particularly exciting to find out which methods, techniques and approaches are suitable for scaling agility and building the right product and the right service for the customer. Business analysis and requirements engineering are two essential disciplines in this context, which also generate high value in an agile setup - even if perhaps lived completely differently compared to a classic project approach.

Rainer's background of experience in business agility is based on his consulting work with companies from various industries. Stages of his professional life include Distinguished Consultant and Partner at Zühlke Engineering, Head of Business Development at digitec Galaxus, responsible for courses at universities of applied sciences on the topic of agility, founder of the Swiss Agile Leaders Circle, founder of Denkplan Verein and active involvement in communities around agility, business analysis and requirements engineering.

If there is still time left, Rainer Grau likes to spend it with his family, doing sports, playing his guitar and reading novels.

• Mission Possible
• Innovation Arena

Martin Tate is an IT consultant who has now personally run or rescued 52 projects to select off-the-shelf solutions, interviewed over 725 people to capture the requirements for selections and appraised over 1,000 candidate solutions. A ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, he formerly worked for an IT provider and was trained to sell software. BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, made him a Chartered Fellow for eminence in evaluating software and recently published his book, a practitioner guide to procuring off-the-shelf IT.

• IT Requirements when Buying, not Making

Corrine Thomas is an experienced leader and Business Analyst with over 25 years of working across a range of industry sectors including Local Government, Healthcare, Telecommunications and Financial services. She has a proven track record of creating and transforming capability of business analysis practices through good people management, training and coaching. She also has many years’ experience of delivering business analysis on large scale change programmes. She is a qualified NLP trainer, coach, an inspiring conference speaker and published author.

• NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 2
• NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 1

Albena Georgieva is a senior requirements engineer with experience in the e-commerce and public domain. During her technology consultancy career at Capgemini she has successfully conducted and coordinated business analysis efforts as well as advised customers on the improvement of the requirements management process in complex corporate environments. Her most recent clients are KLM, Unilever and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
She is currently working on several e-commerce and digital marketing initiatives at KLM mainly in the roles of information analyst and product owner.

• NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 2
• NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 1

Corrine Thomas is an experienced leader and Business Analyst with over 25 years of working across a range of industry sectors including Local Government, Healthcare, Telecommunications and Financial services. She has a proven track record of creating and transforming capability of business analysis practices through good people management, training and coaching. She also has many years’ experience of delivering business analysis on large scale change programmes. She is a qualified NLP trainer, coach, an inspiring conference speaker and published author.

• NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 2
• NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 1

Albena Georgieva is a senior requirements engineer with experience in the e-commerce and public domain. During her technology consultancy career at Capgemini she has successfully conducted and coordinated business analysis efforts as well as advised customers on the improvement of the requirements management process in complex corporate environments. Her most recent clients are KLM, Unilever and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
She is currently working on several e-commerce and digital marketing initiatives at KLM mainly in the roles of information analyst and product owner.

• NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 2
• NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 1

Hans van Loenhoud MSc is a consultant and teacher at Taraxacum in the Netherlands. He has been working in software development for more than 35 years, starting as a Cobol programmer and later on specialized in test and quality management.
In this role, he has been teaching various ISTQB test courses and has been chair of TestNet, the Dutch association of professional software testers. In recent years, he joined IREB to build a bridge between software testing and requirements engineering. He gives various Business Analysis, Requirements Engineering and Software Testing trainings. Hans is also a lecturer at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences for these topics and participates in the IREB advanced level Elicitation working group.

• On the right track
• The goal is to solve the problem
• Translating Exam Questions

Dr. Michael Jastram is an expert model-based systems engineering (MBSE), with a focus on requirements. He has over 20 years experience in software development and requirements engineering, which he regularly shares as author and public speaker. Amongst other things, he publishes weekly updates on Systems Engineering Trends [German] and monthly updates on Requirements Engineering [English].

Michael is a leader in open source requirements management, being project lead of the Eclipse Requirements Modeling Framework. He is also a strong advocate of open standard and actively contributes to the OMG Requirements Interchange Format (ReqIF).

Today, he is founder and principal systems engineer of Formal Mind GmbH, a service provider in Open Systems Engineering.

You can connect digitally with Michael via his Blog [en] | Blog [de] | Twitter | LinkedIn | Xing.

• What is a Useful Perspective in Considering Requirements Engineering Relative to Systems Engineering?
• Modeling Requirements with Constraints
• Open Up

Andreas Maier studied Computational Linguistics, Language Science and Technology and Philosophy at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. From November 2008 to April 2018, he worked as scientific assistant at Fraunhofer IESE, where he focused on the elicitation and the automatic analysis of user requirements provided in natural language. In May 2019, he finished his PhD in computer science, where he investigated difficulties in the identification and specification of hedonic quality in user requirements and developed possible solutions for the mitigation of these difficulties.

• ReqInspector

Simon Darting studied applied computer science with focus on communication at the University of Applied Sciences in Worms, Germany. Subsequent to his studies he started working as a researcher at Fraunhofer IESE in 2012, where he focused on requirements- and systems engineering within large-scale projects. In 2017 he completed his Master's degree in "Software Engineering for Embedded Systems" at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. Since December 2018, he has been employed at BASF SE in Advanced Business Analytics with a focus on predictive maintenance.

• ReqInspector

Freelance trainer and consultant in Software Engineering. 20 years of work experience, including 7 years as consultant and project manager, 10 years in research and university teaching, and two guest professorships. Associate member at IREB, co-author of syllabus and handbook for the CPRE Advanced Level in Requirements Management. www.herrmann-ehrlich.de

• Requirements Engineering in German Job Advertisements

Student of Informatics Teaching at the University of Heidelberg.

• Requirements Engineering in German Job Advertisements

SOPHIST-in-chief (formally: founder and executive partner of the SOPHIST GmbH), chief consultant, coach and trainer. Looking back over 25 years of professional experience, a lot has come up: a company, 6 books, 55 employees, countless articles and presentations and a whole lot of experience. My passion for project consultation might account for the fact that, until now, I do not “only” manage, but I am still directly involved in projects and close to customers.
 

• Is there something missing?
• Requirements under construction

Before working for SOPHIST, Kristina has lived and worked abroad in an intercultural environment. Due to her linguistic studies she is comfortable working with communication models, semantics and syntax. She has developed an excellent feeling for languages based on theory and experience. As consultant and trainer, she benefits from this feeling in the field of elicitation, documentation and management of natural language requirements.

• Is there something missing?
• Requirements under construction

Inge Kress is a specialist in psychosomatic medicine. Currently she works at the University Hospital of Erlangen/Germany. Her research and clinical work focuses on stress and emotion processing. Besides practicing medicine, she engages in medical education regarding psychosomatic issues, giving scientific lectures and workshops. Her main objective is to learn and teach about cognitive, emotional and physiological processes and their impact on mental and physical health, especially in work life.

• To Brainstorm or Not to Brainstorm

As a Requirements Engineering Consultant and Trainer with SOPHIST GmbH, Anja Schwarz supports clients of different fields in all requirements engineering aspects. As a trainer, she prepares her participants for the CPRE Foundation Level certification as well as for the CPRE Advanced Level Elicitation & Consolidation certification. She also supports the IREB e.V. as Lead of the Elicitation and Consolidation working group. The elicitation of innovative requirements and thus the requirements for creativity have always fascinated her, leading to the cooperation with Inge Kress. Together, they brought the neurological aspects of creativity into the context of requirements engineering, also resulting in this article.


• To Brainstorm or Not to Brainstorm

Dr. Kim Lauenroth is Chief Requirements Engineer and leads a competence centre for requirements engineering at adesso AG.

He has over 10 years of experience in software and requirements engineering in different domains. He regularly speaks at internal conferences in the topic of RE. Within IREB, he is involved in the development of the advanced level module Elicitation & Consolidation.

Kim received his PhD in the field of requirements engineering from the University of Duisburg-Essen and studied computer science, business administration and psychology at the University of Dortmund.

• The goal is to solve the problem
• What does it mean?

Daniel Méndez is an Associate Professor for Software Engineering at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden and Senior Scientist at fortiss, the research institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive systems and services. His research is on Empirical Software Engineering with a particular focus on interdisciplinary, qualitative research in Requirements Engineering and its quality improvement. He regularly publishes in various software engineering publications and has occupied several key positions in venues of the empirical software engineering community. He is a member of the ACM, the IEEE Computer Society, and the German association of university professors and lecturers, and he serves as the representative to ISERN, the International Empirical Software Engineering Research Network. Further information is provided at www.mendezfe.org.

• What is the Relevance of Requirements Engineering Research to Practitioners?
• Modeling Requirements and Context as a means for Automated Requirements Validation

Xavier Franch is Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Barcelona (UPC-BarcelonaTech), Spain. He is Council Member and Full Member of the IREB association. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in conferences and journals, many of them related to requirements engineering. He was Program Co-Chair of the RE’16 and REFSQ’11 conferences, and he belongs to the Editorial Board of the Requirements Engineering Journal (Springer) and Information Software and Technology (IST) journals, among others. He is coordinator of the Q-Rapids project and participates in the OpenReq project, both in the H2020 programme. He organizes workshops concerning requirements engineering for NLP4RE, CrowdRE, JIT-RE and others.

• What is the Relevance of Requirements Engineering Research to Practitioners?
• Modeling Requirements and Context as a means for Automated Requirements Validation

Andreas Vogelsang is a post-doc researcher in the software & systems engineering group at the Technical University of Munich. He works on model-based requirements engineering and participated in several research collaborations with industrial partners especially from the automotive industry. His research published was published in relevant international conferences like RE, REFSQ, or ICSE.

• What is the Relevance of Requirements Engineering Research to Practitioners?
• Modeling Requirements and Context as a means for Automated Requirements Validation

Sandra Leek is currently working as a Senior Lead Business Analyst for Lloyds Banking Group. She has been with the organisation for nearly 18 years during which she has taken on a number of roles including Programming and Project Management. She currently works across a number of business areas championing a One Team culture and pragmatic delivery.
In 2014 she was made BA of the Year and has formed part of the IIBA BA Conference committee for the last two years.
In her spare time she enjoys scuba diving, and although being based in Wales, prefers swimming in warmer climates. She also helps run her local scuba dive club and is actively involved in promoting live music, via a local blues club.
Sandra is also involved in her local community via her role as a magistrate.

• What makes Women Better BAs

Grigory Grin is a Chief Software Architect at Axinom – software supplier for Media- and In-Flight Entertainment solutions based in Germany and Estonia.
Grigory studied mathematics and graduated from the Ural State University in Russia in 1995. During his 25 years career on the software development field, Grigory had responsibilities in a broad range of roles – Development, Architecture, Business Analysis, Project Management. His main strengths are in alignment between the customer needs and contractors technical capabilities and solution portfolio to deliver the highest business value.
As a practitioner, Grigory has successfully led multiple multi-million euro projects for world-known brands in the aerospace industry with significant challenges on the field of Requirements Engineering.

• When the rubber hits the road