Cincinnati Software Process Improvement Network
	SPIN is a concept of Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University

TOPIC: Requirements by Collaboration: A Workshop Approach to Defining Needs

Requirements workshops are a proven best practice we’ve known about for decades. These workshops, such as Joint Application Design (JAD), aren’t traditional meetings but are focused, highly productive events attended by carefully selected stakeholders and content experts—led by a neutral facilitator.

Requirements workshops are used to scope, discover, define, and reach closure on requirements. Workshops promote trust, mutual understanding, and strong communications among project stakeholders. They produce deliverables that structure and guide development and are one of the most effective ways to deliver high quality requirements quickly.

In this presentation, Ellen will share:

* How workshops differ from meetings

* Explain the business case for using requirements workshops in software projects

* Workshop roles and skills needed for successful workshops

* A summary of workshop best practices

SPEAKER: Ellen Gottesdiener, Principal Consultant, EBG Consulting, Inc.

Ellen Gottesdiener, Principal Consultant, EBG Consulting, Inc. helps software development and business experts to positively and productively define and achieve shared goals. EBG helps people to collaboratively explore requirements, shape their development processes and plan their work. Ellen is a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) and presents seminars on requirements, facilitated workshops, retrospectives and software inspections and peer reviews. Ellen is Advisor for the Software Development West and Best Practices Conferences and the stickyminds.com web site. She has authored numerous papers on software requirements, methods and modeling. Ellen is author of Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs (Addison-Wesley, 2002), contributing author to Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases Through the Systems Development Life-Cycle. Her latest book Software Requirements Memory Jogger: A Pocket Guide to Help Software and Business Teams Develop and Manage Requirements (Goal/QPC, 2005) will be available this fall. She can be reached at: ellen@ebgconsulting.com and http://www.ebgconsulting.com.

Presentation Link