Performing traceability of delivered functionality to requirements without tying them back to Business Objectives is in my opinion an exercise in futility. To anyone engaged in this exercise, I ask “So What?” At first blush this might seem like an extreme position to take. The benefits of requirements traceability seem readily obvious whether or not [...]

The CCB (Change Control Board). It is their responsibility to oversee and approve any proposed changes to your software project. They’re officially in charge of moving the cheese around – or approving completely new cheese. Once they get to work, your nice, safe plate of Pepper Jack could morph overnight into something rich and strange, [...]

Well, I hate to say it, but my week here at INCOSE 2008 has come to an end. And though I must say goodbye to my INCOSE friends, I’m not headed home quite yet – first I will enjoy a few days in Amsterdam, just up the road from Utrecht. A few final comments from [...]

With all of the buzz about Agile, I have to mention that here at INCOSE 2008, I did not hear a single mention of it (except when I asked about it directly!). Actually, that’s not true, at one point I was excited to see a speaker’s slides which referenced applying agile processes as a step [...]

James Andary, Maria So & Barry Breindel from the NASA Goddard space center presented “Systems Engineering Technical Authority: A Path to Mission Success”. The goal behind this program they call “Technical Authority” (TA) is to give a voice to the engineers on projects. Under the previous model, project managers were the central path to communicate [...]

Tuesday’s favorite talk for me was “A System-of-Systems Framework for the Future Hydrogen-Based Transportation Economy” by Michael Duffy & Debra Sandor of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This was an interesting talk, less because of any discussion of requirements and more because it represents a complex systems engineering challenge. Also, I just wanted to share [...]

Mary Bone presented a paper “Cyclone Process: Dealing with Vague Requirements” at INCOSE 2008 in the technical track. I’m going to try to summarize her work here. Her premise is that existing requirements models do not deal with vague requirements, but rather they specifically aim to remove any vagueness from requirements. However, she contends that [...]

The opening talk on Monday at INCOSE 2008, “Crossing Borders by Applying Systems Engineering”, was by Bert Klerk, the CEO of ProRail, who runs the railway system of the Netherlands. Behind Japan and Switzerland, this country is 3rd in the list of most densely used railroad networks. They have 6500 km of track and because [...]

I think this is becoming a new favorite pastime, blogging from conferences! I’m here at INCOSE 2008 in the Netherlands, specifically the beautiful old town of Utrecht. In case you are not familiar with it, Utrecht is the oldest town in the Netherlands, about 30 minutes by train from Amsterdam. I have been here a [...]

User Interface design is often assigned responsibility for look-and-feel. While I understand the importance of UI design, I am highly dissatisfied by its reliance on “heuristics” and, frankly, the uneven quality of those who profess expertise in the subject. I submit that UI needs a haircut — that we should limit the scope of what [...]