From: Andrew Gabb (agabb@tpgi.com.au)
Date: Mon Jun 07 2004 - 01:18:03 EST
dorfman@rahul.net wrote:
> I agree with this completely. There may come a time when the
> limitations of natural language (in which I include tables and
> graphics) are what keep us from further progress in accurately
> documenting requirements for developers. But we're not there today.
> We could make huge progress by simply doing a better job of
> understanding what is needed and writing it up in natural language.
Back in the early 90s I was asked to do an assessment of the software development capability of a small company, as part of a potential buy-out. I decided to use the SW-CMM as a guide. I had a fair understanding of SW-CMM at the time, but had never actually applied it. Neither the company nor the potential buyer had heard of the SW-CMM (but to give them credit, both showed great interest). I only told them what I was using late in the assessment, and no, it was not anything like a standard CBA-IPI SW-CMM appraisal.
Like all good consultancies, it was a good learning experience. My first lesson was that a CMM is a fairly good basis for this type of assessment - meaning that it gelled fairly well with my own views on capability, and focused my short (1.5 day) review rather nicely. I found some rather serious problems, particularly in their management.
The second was that it made me look good to both parties because I was being systematic and obviously knew more than them in this area (because I knew about the SW-CMM:=).
But the third lesson was the killer (and here's where I get back to the topic!!). I found that that no-one in the org could even understand the *questions* above level 3, let alone understand why anyone would ever want to do that sort of stuff.
I think the development of RE practice is rather like that. Until you do the basics reasonably well, the sophistications probably won't help you much at all. If you decide that the sophistications are more important than the basics, then you're heading for a fall. (And like capability models, there will always be some contention about how much they're likely to help you and when and where.)
Because I'm feeling generous tonight I won't start a rant about academics who concentrate on the sophistications without a clue about the basics, assuming the basics are somehow flawed. But that happens, too.
Andrew
-- Andrew Gabb email: agabb@tpgi.com.au Adelaide, South Australia phone: +61 8 8342-1021, fax: +61 8 8269-3280 ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To send a message to this mailing list send it to re-online@it.uts.edu.au. To unsubscribe from this mailing list, email majordomo@it.uts.edu.au with the message `unsubscribe re-online' in the BODY of the mail.
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