A special thanks to all that attended the RWG sessions at IW2019 along with those that volunteered to give a presentation and lead a discussion on their topic – without your active involvement and dedication, IW2019 would not have been the success it was!
Over the four days, we had 120 attend the various RWG sessions. There were a number of attendees that were new INCOSE members and several existing members that were attending IW for the first time. Their common interest was requirements! Several said their main reason for attending IW, were the variety of topics on the RWG agenda. The RWG gained 24 new members at IW, growing the RWG membership to 520 members, making the RWG the largest WG by far.
The overall theme of the RWG for IW“The role of requirements in an MBSE world” was very popular among the attendees. Based on this theme we had 10 presentations resulting in a good cross section of perspectives and insights. The format of the sessions was such that questions and comments during the presentations were encouraged, making the presentations much more interesting and engaging.
While many good points were made over the 4 days, several thoughts that emerged during our sessions and really stuck with me were:
- The concept of “duality” as applied to requirements and models. Depending on the what is being done and what is being communicated, textual requirements and models are two sides of the same SE coin. Neither is solely sufficient – both are needed!
- Requirements don’t just happen – they are a transformation from a set of needs, that was transformed from a set of concepts that address a feasible solution to a problem.
- The quality of the requirements is directly proportional to the quality of the set of stakeholder needs from which they were transformed. Likewise, the quality of the set of needs is directly proportional to the quality and quantity of the work done to define the problem, understand the stakeholder expectations, drivers and constraints, and risks – as well as the time and effort spent in defining a feasible logical and physical concept (model) based on this information prior to documenting the needs.
- Preliminary conceptual and physical design architectural models are both the source of the stakeholder needs and resulting requirements (design inputs) as well as the tools used to implement those same sets of needs and requirements in the form of the design and the engineered system of interest (design outputs).
- 20thcentury SE methods and practices are often not adequate to address the challenges of increasingly complex, software centric systems of the 21stcentury!
Finally, we also developed and submitted TPPs for two new products: “Guide to Developing and Managing Requirements” and “Guide to Verification and Validation.” In addition, we developed and submitted a TPP for an update to our popular “Guide to Writing Requirements”.
All IW 2019 RWG presentations and associated materials are available on the RWG Connect web site for INCOSE members: https://connect.incose.org/WorkingGroups/Requirements/Pages/Home.aspx
Once there, click on the “RWG sessions at IW2019” link on the left to see what we accomplished and then select “documents” download any of the presentations and background materials you are interested in.
IW2019 was an exciting kick off to a new year! Thank you all for your interest, involvement, and support!
