Exploring Requirements Assignment

This assignment concerns the book Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design by Gause & Weinberg (G&W). You should read the entire book, then respond to what you've read by addressing the following:

Include an annotation attached to the front of the artifact. The document should use professional language, be proof-read for grammar and spelling, properly indicate all direct quotes (of which there should be very few), and be typed or printed.

Assessment Rubric

Requirements Definition
5 pts. Statement of the fundamental problem with requirements definition as seen by G&W.
5 pts. Why is it so critical?
20 pts. Citation of two of the tools presented by G&W that can be used to expose the problem. For each, a description of the tool [5 pts.] followed by an explanation of the underlying principle that accounts for why that tool works [5 pts.].
5 pts. How you anticipate applying these tools to the Senior Design Project or to your professional work.
Meeting Effectiveness
15 pts. Description of how at least three of the techniques for improving the effectiveness of meetings given by G&W may help in your Senior Design Project group situations or in your professional work. [5 pts. each]
User Inclusion
15 pts. Description of three suggestions that G&W present to mitigate problems arising from the situation where the user is not readily accessible or it is prohibitively expensive to maintain close contact. [5 pts. each]
5 pts. How you anticipate handling this type of situation arising in a future development effort you find yourself involved in, so as to improve your chances of successfully satisfying the goals of the project.
Managing Agreements
10 pts. The "parking lot effect": With respect to formalizing and managing agreed-upon decisions, a description of the effect [5 pts.] and how it can undermine the success of a project [5 pts.].
10 pts. Similarly, "leakage": A description [5 pts.] and how it can undermine success [5 pts.].
5 pts. How you anticipate reducing the danger they represent in the Senior Design Project.
Annotation
5 pts. Meaningful title.
5 pts. Accurate, comprehensive description.
10 pts. Insightful observations in reflection. Attempt to connect assignment to larger context.
Structure
10 pts. Limited use of direct quotations. (The content is presented in your own words.)
5 pts. Printed or typed.
5 pts. Intelligibility and organization.
5 pts. Professional language standards.
Extra Credit
5 pts. Description of the technique G&W present by which computer programmers can find areas in code that are more likely to contain errors.
5 pts. Why does it work?
5 pts. How you anticipate applying it to the code you write for the Senior Design Project or in your professional work.




©1997,1998,2006 Dr. Jody Paul  -  jody@acm.org
Last updated on 2 April 2006.