Exercise 1: Communication in RE

Seite 2/X Requirements Engineering Expressing what you mean... „I know you believe you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure whether you realize that what you heard is not what I meant!“ - Alan Greenspan in front of the US-Congress -

Seite 3/X Requirements Engineering What is to come in this excercise? A game in 3 Iterations -1. Iteration (10min) -Presentation of results (10min) -Strategymeeting for 2nd Iteration (10min) -2. Iteration (5min) -Presentation of results (10min) -Strategymeeting for 3rd Iteration (5min) -3. Iteration (5min) -Presentation of results & wrap-up (10min)

Seite 4/X Requirements Engineering The Game cannot be completely explained by slides. Please ask your colleagues about the complete procedure.

Seite 5/X Requirements Engineering Task (1.+2. Iteration) 2-3 Requirements- Engineers 2-4 Developers Customer 60 Seconds for RE Präsentationsfläche 10 minutes (later 5) for RE and development!!!

Seite 6/X Requirements Engineering Typical Lessons Learned (1st iteration) Between Teams: -Handover of first requirements to design team after 7 minutes!  too late, like in Software Development Projects! -Always handing new requirements on the same object confused the design team  feels requirements are unstable! -Using metaphor to describe objects was very useful to speed-up design (Snowman) In the Requirements Team: -Some RE-team split for drawing the picture from the screen (upper part, lower part)  increases efficiency -Writing details about the requirements first took much time and seemed to confuse the design team.  First describe the big picture! In the Design Team: -Requirements on two sheets of paper were inconsistent (as RE-people wrote requirements separately) -Usage of Grid system was a good means to coordinate objects (first information about the rough layout, then detailed layout). Grid should have been defined upfront.

Seite 7/X Requirements Engineering Lessons Learned (2nd iteration) Between Teams: -First handover  in Group 2 after 22 seconds, second handover after one minute!  in Group 3 after 1 minute  Group 1 after1,5 minutes  much more iterative, produced better results! -Metaphors (pyramid, opened envelope) help to be more efficient, but metaphor is culture dependent (house of santa clause metaphor was only common to Germans!) -Alignment between teams (coordinate system, etc.) was very helpful! In the Requirements Team: -Split of requirements engineers when getting the picture from the monitor enabled more efficiency -Math helped to be very precise in drawing the lines (with the angles) In the Design Team: -Design team: only one person was drawing: more efficiency could be reached. -One team interpreted the requirements differently, they were actually completely correctly written down but design-team made assumptions about what makes sense…

Seite 8/X Requirements Engineering Lessons Learned (3rd Iteration) Direct verbal communication is much faster. Direct feedback to the results is powerful and makes RE easier (Prototyping). Some groups used parallel drawing to sketch design alternatives. Some threat, because an unintended expression of verbal requirements is hard to revoke.