Software Special Interest Group Meeting

Where
MITRE McLean; FDA Silver Spring; MITRE Bedford MA; MITRE Eatontow; MITRE Aberdeen, MD
MITRE-2 room 1N100, 7525 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA 22102
FDA, Bld 66, room G512, 10903 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring, MD
various, Maryland
703-983-6127

When
Jul 24, 2012 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm (GMT -5:00) EST

Requirements-Management Requirements --

Requisite Doors to Success

by: Alfred Kromholz

Tuesday July 24, 2012

Defining and managing requirements continues to be an ongoing problem in almost every enterprise– not only software requirements but in every aspect of production. Tools to help manage requirements have been around for a long time, perhaps not in geological or archaeological terms but certainly as seen from the perspective of our rapidly-evolving industry. But despite our need for requirements-management tools, both our use of these tools and the tools themselves are disappointingly primitive. For example, in software, we tend to talk a lot about “traceability,” but for us traceability often equates to requirements decomposition – the “how” of achieving the purpose of a product - rather than the “why” – the value that product and its requirements contribute to the customer.

Ironically, one of the main contributors to this primitive state is that, we don’t, for various reasons, define our requirements for managing requirements. As a result, when we acquire RM tools, the tools are complex, cumbersome, and costly to configure and maintain. The result: tools are acquired, installed (sometimes), configured (sometimes), and all too often bypassed.

This brief talk takes a bird’s-eye view of what we want to achieve through requirements management, then plunges directly into the sea of tool features and captures the essentials of what we really need them for.

Alfred Kromholz received a B.E.E. from Cornell University, worked for several years on the Apollo program, then earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in ancient languages, history, and archaeology. After 12 years in the Near East working in both computers and anthropology, he returned to the US to join the space station program, focusing on data/systems integration and organizational culture change. At MITRE's Software Engineering Center he has worked in both civilian sectors (Energy, FAA, Homeland Security, IRS, Veterans’ Affairs) and various programs and projects across the DoD (DISA, DLA, Army, Navy, Air Froce) He currently concentrates on program infrastructure; configuration, change and requirements management; QA, the "ilities" – and on optimizing relationships among products, processes, and, most important, people.

Locations:

The presentation will originate at the McLean facility, with video tele-conferencing (VTC) between:

MITRE-2, room 1N100

7515 Colshire Drive

McLean, VA 22102

host: Scott Ankrum

cell: 240-731-7581

Our FDA host

is not available

this month.

MITRE, room 2503

260 Industrial Way West

Eatontown, NJ 07724

host: Aaron Dagen

desk: 732-578-6301

MITRE, room 1M306

202 Burlington Rd (Rt. 62)

Bedford, MA 01730

host: Tim Rice

cell: 978-758-2704

For details and driving directions, see the full announcement flyer.

If you can host another location via VTC, please contact Scott Ankrum (below)

TO ATTEND THE MeetingPlace Collaboration CONFERENCE:

1. Go to: http://audioconference.mitre.org/ 2. Click on Attend Meeting. If MeetingPlace Collaboration Window does not automatically open, press connect. 3. Dial your telephone to connect to the audio of the meeting.

· Dial 703-983-6338 (x36338) from the Washington DC region.

· Dial 781-271-6338 (x16338) from the Bedford, MA region.

Meeting ID: 509509, when prompted. Meeting Password: 05090509, when prompted.

Visit http://audioconference.mitre.org to test your web browser for compatibility with the web conference. Follow

this link to the browser test link on the page.

Registration:

Registration Website: http://www.asq509.org/ht/d/DoSurvey/i/26913

You must register by noon on Monday, July 23. If you cannot attend at any location, select telephone dial-in when you register. FDA (Silver Spring) cannot host non-citizen visitors. If not a US citizen, please provide your title, employer, and address. Allow 2 business days for registration before the meeting.

For registration problems or further information contact Scott Ankrum at: ankrums@mitre.org or 703-983-6127

Software SIG Chairman: T. Scott Ankrum (ASQ & IEEE)

Software SIG Committee: Chris Jones (ASQ & SSQ); Alfred Kromholz (SSQ); Tim Rice; James M. Simpson (ASQ); Rhonda Farrell (IEEE), Tom Neff (IEEE), Lance Kelson (SSQ & IEEE), Aaron Dagen (IEEE); Girish Seshagiri; John Forbes; Meg Weinberg; Joyce Byrne, Tom Everett

Sponsored Jointly By: The American Society for Quality (ASQ), Washington DC & Maryland Metro Section (509), Software Special Interest Group (SSIG); IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC & Northern Virginia Chapters; and Society for Software Quality (SSQ), Washington, DC Area Chapter. Members of the ASQ SSIG include software quality professionals, software engineers, and others interested in applying quality principles to the field of software development. See our web page: http://www.asq509.org/ht/d/sp/i/2499/pid/2499. We meet every month, usually at the MITRE facility in McLean, Virginia, with VTC to other locations.