Articles

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

Christoph Wolf works for more than 15 years as Requirements Engineer, Business Analyst, Project Manager and Quality Assurance Manager. He has built up a Business Analysis team and led it for several years. Since last year, he is consultant at SwissQ and supports clients in requirements engineering and quality assurance with focus on delivering business value. 

• The Business Analysis Center of Excellence

Ellen Gottesdiener is an internationally recognized leader in the convergence of agile + requirements + product management + project management. Ellen is founder and principal of EBG Consulting, which helps organizations adapt how they collaborate to improve business outcomes.

Ellen’s passion is helping people use modern product requirements practices to build valued products and great teams. She provides training, coaching, and facilitates discovery and planning workshops across diverse industries, including education, energy, financial services, pharmaceutical, software, transportation, and telecommunications.

Ellen is a world-renowned writer, speaker, and presenter. Her most recent book, co-authored with Mary Gorman, is Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis. Ellen is author of two other acclaimed books: Requirements by Collaboration and The Software Requirements Memory Jogger.

You can connect digitally with Ellen via her Blog | Twitter | Newsletter | LinkedIn 

• Agile Product Ownership

Erik van Veenendaal (www.erikvanveenendaal.nl) is a leading international consultant and trainer, and a widely recognized expert in the area of software testing and quality management.

He is the founder of Improve Quality Services BV (www.improveqs.nl). He holds the EuroSTAR record, winning the best tutorial award three times! In 2007 he received the European Testing Excellence Award for his contribution to the testing profession over the years. He has been working as a test manager and consultant in various domains for more than 20 years. He has written numerous papers and a number of books, including “Practical Risk-Based Testing: The PRISMA Approach” and “ISTQB Foundations of Software Testing”. He is one of the core developers of the TMap testing methodology and a participant in working parties of the International Requirements Engineering Board (IREB). Erik is also a former part-time senior lecturer at the Eindhoven University of Technology, vice-president of the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (2005–2009) and currently board member of the TMMi Foundation.

You can follow Erik on twitter via @ErikvVeenendaal.

• RE for Testers

Ulf Ackermann currently works as a Requirements Engineer in the B2B Industry Commerce division of T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH. His degree in commercial information technology at the Dresden University of Applied Sciences helps him to capture customer requirements from both business and technical perspectives. He has more than 7 years’ experience in large scale E-Commerce projects and specializes in the area of project procedure models. He states: “Structuring a project from the few known variables to produce an appealing offering for the customer is the most challenging and in the end rewarding part of my daily work.”

• Customized Agile RE Process

Dirk Fritsch is a Principal Consultant in the requirements division at QA Systems GmbH.  He has over 10 years of experience in business analysis, process modelling and requirements engineering and has worked on customer projects from every sector. He collaborated in research projects at the University of Duisburg/Essen and the University of Leipzig, addressing recurring issues from customer projects to improve existing methods using new technologies and solutions. In his current work he focuses on training and coaching for requirements management using classical and agile methods.

• Customized Agile RE Process

Thijmen works as IT architect at Kommuninvest acting as technical lead for its digitalization initiative and growing CI/CD and Agile practice in the company. His work on the mini-QAW started in his role as researcher at ABB, where he worked on software architectures with colleagues around the globe. He authored publications at leading international software conferences, receiving two best paper awards. Thijmen graduated cum-laude in software engineering from VU University in the Netherlands and Malardalen University in Sweden.

• Discover Quality Requirements with the Mini-QAW

Michael Keeling is a software engineer at LendingHome and the author of Design It! From Programmer to Software Architect. In his career so far, he has worked on a variety of interesting software systems including IBM Watson, enterprise search applications, financial platforms, and Navy combat systems. Michael has a master’s degree in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the College of William and Mary. Contact him via Twitter @michaelkeeling or his website, https://www.neverletdown.net

• Discover Quality Requirements with the Mini-QAW

Will Chaparro is a software development manager in IBM’s Watson Group. He spent over 5 years designing and building complex enterprise search solutions as a managing consultant. Prior to IBM he spent 11 years as a software engineer. He has a BS in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

• Discover Quality Requirements with the Mini-QAW

Ina Paschen is a Senior Business Analyst and Project Manager at Zühlke Schweiz. As a practitioner and consultant she helps ensure her clients deliver successful projects: a clear project set-up, a solid requirements engineering process, clear requirements and business processes to be developed, an improved development process or a transparent communication between development and management to build trust, to reduce impediments, and therefore bridging worlds like agile and non-agile.

• Bridging communication gaps with a Feature Tree

Emmerich Fuchs has more than 30 years of experience in application development and is a consultant in business process modelling, requirements engineering and quality assurance. Since 1985 he has been teaching at technical colleges and universities of applied science, and is a well-known trainer, as well as a co-author and an examinant, as well as an active member of IREB.

• Bridging communication gaps with a Feature Tree

Alexander Rachmann advises companies on the linking business and IT. His strong interdisciplinary knowledge of business administration and computer science enables him to work as an ideal Requirements Engineer, Business Analyst, or System Analyst. He has worked in industries such as e-commerce, healthcare, IT security, and software development. He holds a doctorate degree in economics, master's degrees in computer science and information science and a diploma in business computer science.

• Product Owner in Scrum

Jesko Schneider worked as a consultant with a focus on Business Analysis, Requirements Management and Usability Engineering. He built up consulting services for Requirements Engineering and Usability Engineering in an international consulting company. His industry focus lies on telecommunications. He is a well-known trainer for Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering from the IREB. In his role as Requirements Engineer, Business Analyst, System Analyst or Product Owner, he is always the linkage between business and IT. He holds a degree in media informatics.

• Product Owner in Scrum

Frank Engel looks back on over 10 years’ experience in project management and Requirements Engineering. Prior to his time as a Partner of the Anforderungsfabrik, he was responsible for an international consulting company as Unit Manager. Topic of his business unit was Requirements Engineering and Management. His role in projects is Product Owner, Project Manager and Requirements Engineer. He studied business information systems. Always linking business and IT!

• Product Owner in Scrum

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 Job Offers

Maya Daneva, PhD, is Senior Member of Scientific Staff in the Services and Cybersecurity group at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Her research interests are requirements engineering for large systems, security requirements engineering, requirements-based project estimation, user feedback analytics, and empirical research methods. Maya has a strong international exposure having spent two years of her career in Germany at the University of Saarbruecken and in the IDS Scheer, and 9 years as a business process analyst for SAP Enterprise Recourse Planning projects at TELUS Corporation, Canada’s second largest telecommunication company.

• Requirements Engineering in Job Offers

Chong Wang is an assistant professor at Wuhan University. She has over 10 years of work experience in research and university teaching. Her research interests include requirements engineering, software engineering, and service computing.

• Requirements Engineering in Job Offers

Nelly Condori-Fernandez is an assistant professor at the Universidade da Coruna (Spain) and research associate of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands). Her research focuses on topics related to quality requirements prioritization and sustainability. She has published 85 articles in indexed journals and ranked conferences. Besides, she has been involved in several European projects.

• Requirements Engineering in Job Offers

Cristina Palomares is a PhD student in the Software Engineering for Information Systems Research Group (GESSI) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Her PhD thesis deals about the construction, use and evolution of software requirement patterns for the reuse of requirements knoledge.

She has published several papers and presented posters and demos in requirements engineering conferences like in IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE) and the International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ). She is the coordinator of developers of the PABRE System for supporting requirements reuse.

• What is the Relevance of Requirements Engineering Research to Practitioners?
• Requirements Reuse

Dr. Carme Quer is associate professor in the Service and Information System Engineering department (ESSI) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). She is member of the Software Engineering for Information Systems Research Group (GESSI) at the UPC. Her main research lines are requirements engineering and software quality.

She has published several papers in requirements engineering conferences like in the IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE) and the International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ). She was General Chair of the Workshop on Requirements Engineering (WER) held in 2008.

• What is the Relevance of Requirements Engineering Research to Practitioners?
• Requirements Reuse

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?
• Requirements Reuse

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.
 

• Stable? Fragile? Agile! Attractive but reasonable

Human capital is not merely a phrase we do not live, it is one of the most important goods we have. With regards to my function as a Project coordinator, my aspiration is to target the optimized commitment of the individualized abilities, strengths and talents of the SOPHISTs. In addition, I am permanently looking for new employees for the team, taking care of our trainees, development of the staff and thus I am constantly supporting our executives. I benefit from my studies of Social Sciences, my multi-year experience in Human Resources and my sense for the positive.

• Stable? Fragile? Agile! Attractive but reasonable

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

Frank Rabeler is a Business Analyst at T-Systems in Germany, where he specializes in requirements engineering for telecommunications software systems. Previously he worked as a database expert with focus on data modeling. How to design documents, data models etc. in the best readable way? Questions like these have been challenging him over the last 25 years as an IT professional. For 15 years now he has been using Information Mapping as part of his daily work and he appreciates this method as a success factor - especially in RE.

• Readable requirements

Gareth is an experienced business analyst and product owner who has been working in the telecoms and other industries for longer than he’d like to be specific about. He has been an active member of IREB for some years and is a co-author and examiner within the RE@Agile working group. He lives and works in Germany having successfully escaped from a small, slightly uncooperative island.

• Splitting Requirements at Scale
• RE in Agile Projects: Survey Results
• RE in Agile Projects: a Survey
• How agile can Requirements Engineers really be?

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

Jens Schirpenbach has been working as a consultant in the area of Product Lifecycle management for more than 12 years focusing on operations transformation in the area of Engineering and Services. He worked as a solution architect and project manager for diverse projects, essentially in the automotive, aerospace and manufacturing industry. He managed a team for PLM at a major European consultancy. After eleven years in consulting he founded P&PM Solutions & Consulting.
He has a joint master degree in mechanical Engineering and business administration of the University of Darmstadt, Germany.

• Opportunities & Approaches

Founder of the consulting company “Crescendo Technologies”, Joseph Aracic is a System Engineering Consultant, focusing on requirements management techniques and processes, product line engineering and model driven engineering.

Prior to this, Joseph has been the manager of the Telelogic (Now an IBM Rational brand) French Professional Services team for requirements management and architecture modeling. Joseph has been involved in various system engineering projects (mainly in the defense industry) as consultant/coach in system engineering techniques deployment.

• A key technique

Manon Penning has a broad background in the fields of IT and education. She is an educational specialist, requirements engineer, quality analyst and trainer currently employed by Improve Quality Services, a provider of consultancy and training. Via Improve Quality Services she has been working for several Dutch companies over the past few years.

• Biased Toddlers
• The Genius Toddler Challenge

Manon Penning has a broad background in the fields of IT and education. She is an educational specialist, requirements engineer, quality analyst and trainer currently employed by Improve Quality Services, a provider of consultancy and training. Via Improve Quality Services she has been working for several Dutch companies over the past few years.

• Biased Toddlers
• The Genius Toddler Challenge

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

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

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

Sven is senior consultant|trainer at inspearit|cibit academy. He has worked on aligning business and IT at various organisations for more than 20 years. Both at profit and non-profit organisations Sven has helped teams and individuals to reach improvements in processes and results. He masters and applies several methods and techniques. Sven has helped many persons to achieve more with the right use of requirements engineering techniques and with agile ideas and frameworks. He loves to share his experience with others.

• Requirements Engineering and Agile