Articles

Michael Mey, Managing Consultant at Obvious Works, holds a diploma in Computer Science from Furtwangen University, Germany, where he first explored AI and neural networks. With extensive experience in international software projects, particularly in the financial industry, Michael has held key roles at major corporations and launched a crypto startup through an incubation program, blending corporate and entrepreneurial insights. An Agile coach and trainer, he specializes in Requirements Engineering and AI integration. Michael is engaged in the IREB Special Interest Group AI and regularly speaks at conferences like REConf, REFSQ, and Scrum Day. As co-creator of the AIxRE Masterclass, he is dedicated to helping organizations optimize their processes by integrating AI into Requirements Engineering practices.

• AI Assistants in Requirements Engineering | Part 1

Nuno Santos is currently a Senior Business Analyst at Natixis Portugal. He holds a PhD in Technologies and Information Systems, and is also certified from Agile Alliance as CSPO, and from the IIBA as CCBA, AAC and POA. He has also written articles about requirements, agility and product ownership at RE Magazine, BA Digest, Analyst Catalyst, Medium, and in several scientific conferences.

• Requirements Elicitation in Modern Product Discovery
• Inputs to requirements engineering in agile projects

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

Howard Podeswa is a thought leader in the intersection of agile and business analysis. For over twenty years, he has been helping large organizations optimize their analysis and planning practices for agile software development approaches. He has authored a number of books that have become staple references for practitioners, most recently: The Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning: From Strategic Plan to Continuous Value Delivery - How Product Owners and Business Analysts (BAs) maximize the value of the product developed by the team, by integrating BA competencies with agile methodologies (Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition, 2021). Other works include UML for the IT Business Analyst (2009), and The Business Analyst’s Handbook (2008).

At Noble Inc., he has provided agile and business analysis services to clients worldwide, including the International Standards Organization (ISO), Moody’s, the Mayo Clinic, TELUS, TD Bank, LabCorp, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Mawer Investment Management Ltd., Bell Nexia, and REI Coop. He is currently advising IIBA on its Nimble initiative.

To contact Howard for in-house and public training and coaching services, please email howardpodeswa@nobleinc.ca or find him on LinkedIn @howardpodeswa

• Why Your Agile Organization Needs a High-Performing Requirements Engineering Competency
• The Business Case for Agile Business Analysis
• Five Questions

Suzanne Robertson is having a stellar career in information technology and systems engineering. Suzanne is a pioneer in adapting ideas from other domains for automated solutions. She has collaborated in workshops using experts from fields as diverse as modern music, visualization, and cookery. Ideas from these domains were adapted to make major breakthroughs in creative ideas for domains ranging from air traffic control to local government. She is co-author of the best-selling Mastering the Requirements Process, among other books and courses. She is co-creator of the Volere requirements techniques. She was the founding editor of the Requirements Column in IEEE Software.

• Integrating Business Events into your Agile Framework
• How Will It Work?

As a principal and founder of The Atlantic Systems Guild, James Robertson is known for his work in implementing systems engineering principles that link business specialists with solution specialists. James is a consultant, lecturer, author, project leader whose area of concern is the requirements for software, and the contribution that good business analysis makes to successful projects. James is co-author of 5 books that have been influential in the business analysis world. His training as an architect has led to his work on good design principles and to his focus on how innovation can be integrated with business analysis.

• Integrating Business Events into your Agile Framework
• How Will It Work?

Rana Siadati is currently a PhD student in Software Requirements Engineering and also a visiting lecturer by the School of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire. Alongside these roles, Rana has many years of academic and industrial experience, also at managerial level, gained in the UK and abroad.

• Learning from history: The case of Software Requirements Engineering

Paul Wernick is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire. Dr Wernick has taken leading roles in the ProSim series of software process simulation workshops, and the IEEE Workshop on Software Evolvability. Dr Wernick’s current research interests cover the high-level human environment within which software processes occur and their simulation, and computer security.

• Learning from history: The case of Software Requirements Engineering

Vito Veneziano is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire, and his interests range from software engineering, HCI, requirements analysis and system modelling, to how software systems impact on organisations. Previously Dr Veneziano worked in IT and project management, business application development, software design and consultancy.

• Learning from history: The case of Software Requirements Engineering

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

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

Karol Frühauf is co-founder of INFOGEM AG in Switzerland, since 1987 consulting in the field of software project and quality management (http://www.infogem.ch). He worked 12 years for BBC Brown Boveri & Cie and helped since 1987 many companies to improve their processes and products. He co-authored two books and is a frequent speaker, tutor and teacher in the field of software engineering. His main interests are test and quality management and requirements engineering.
He initiated and directs the "Bridge Guard Art / Science Residence Centre" in Štúrovo, Slovakia (http://www.bridgeguard.org).

• Sharing My Doubts on the Focus of Requirements
• Sharing My Doubts on Goals and Requirements
• Sharing My Doubts on Shall / Should / Will etc.
• Sharing My Doubts on Acceptance Criteria

Albert Tort is the Research&Innovation Solutions Lead in Sogeti Spain. During the last years, he has been working as Quality Assurance and Software Control & Testing specialist in several projects for customers in different sectors (banking, airlines, insurance, procurement, etc.). Furthermore, he has been the lead of research&innovation projects developed at Sogeti. He was the winner of the “Capgemini-Sogeti Testing Innovation Awards 2015” for the submission of the best individual entry "Recover: Reverse Modeling and Up-To-Date Evolution of Functional Requirements in Alignment with Tests. He is also a member of the SogetiLabs community.

Previously, he served as a professor and researcher at the Services and Information Systems Engineering Department of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-Barcelona Tech. As a member of the Information Modeling and Processing (MPI) research group, he focused his research on conceptual modeling, software engineering methodologies, OMG standards, knowledge management, requirements engineering, service science, semantic web and software quality assurance. Currently, he is also the coordinator of the postgraduate degree in Software Quality Assurance of the School of Professional & Executive Development of the Technical University Of Catalunya (BarcelonaTech).

He obtained his Computer Science degree in 2008 and he received his M.Sc. in Computing in 2009. In 2012 he presented the PhD thesis “Testing and Test-Driven Development of Conceptual Schemas”. He is the author of several publications in software engineering journals and conferences.

• KCycle: Knowledge-Based & Agile Software Quality Assurance
• The Recover Approach

Bastian Tenbergen is an Assistant Professor for Computer Science at the State University of New York at Oswego. He has co-authored articles and contributed to several books in the area of Software Engineering. Bastian’s main research focus is on Model-Based Requirements Engineering, Context Analysis, and Safety of Embedded and Cyber-Physical Systems. He has many years of project and consulting experience and has worked closely with industry.

• 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.

• Modeling Requirements and Context as a means for Automated Requirements Validation

Thorsten Weyer is a research group leader at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He has been a member of organization committees, program committees and reviewer for scientific conferences and journals. Thorsten gives regular lectures at the University and is an experienced conference speaker. He has also held several leading positions in research projects and technology transfer projects. He is member of the IREB council and head of the IREB working group Requirements Modeling.

• Modeling Requirements and Context as a means for Automated Requirements Validation

Andreas Froese works as a research assistant in the working group Software Systems Engineering (Prof. Dr. Klaus Pohl) at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He worked in several research projects where he was able to expand his knowledge in the domain of Requirements Engineering for software-intensive Embedded Systems, as well as in those of model-based Context Analysis and context-based Quality Assurance.

• Modeling Requirements and Context as a means for Automated Requirements Validation

Jan Christoph Wehrstedt works as a mathematician at the Technology Field Automation & Control at Siemens Corporate Technology. Currently he is Senior Key Expert for Efficient Simulation Driven System Development. He is the project manager of several business (Siemens internal) and public funded projects dealing with the integration of simulation and modeling approaches towards a simulation based engineering of technical systems and plants and it’s embedding into PLM lifecycle and tools.

• Modeling Requirements and Context as a means for Automated Requirements Validation

Veronika Brandstetter is a mathematician in the Technology Field Automation & Control at Siemens Corporate Technology. She is developing methods for seamless engineering and improved operation of technical systems based on simulation. Recently, she focused on simulation based design for manufacturing technologies. She has been working in various Siemens internal research projects as well as in publicly funded projects also managing part of them in different groups within the Technology Field.

• Modeling Requirements and Context as a means for Automated Requirements Validation

Eduard C. Groen is engineering psychologist. His fascination with the rapid rise of man-machine interfaces and other changes that affect society inspires him to contribute with technologies that optimally make use of the potential that these developments bring. As Fraunhofer IESE operates at the intersection of science and industry, he is involved in a variety of projects, while leading the development of the “Crowd-based Requirements Engineering” approach.

• How Requirements Engineering can benefit from crowds

Matthias Koch studied computer science with a focus on software engineering. Since 2012, he is employed as engineer at Fraunhofer IESE and mainly addresses the topics of requirements engineering and business analysis. In this context, he was involved in research projects on the pre-project and requirements definition phase, case studies and product evaluations. In research as well as industry projects, he regularly acts as requirements responsible, conducts workshops with customers and provides consulting.

• How Requirements Engineering can benefit from crowds

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

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