Lecture 10 More Innovation

SE3821 Software Requirements and Specification

Dr. Rob Hasker (based on slides by Dr. Brad Dennis)

The Volere ProcessToday:

•Interviews•Workshops•Focus Groups•Surveys/Questionnaires•Roleplaying•Product Box “Innovation Game”•Others

Brown Cow•Mandate: improve the work• Don’t just reimplement• Improvement must

innovate•How to identify innovative requirements?

Brown Cow•Mandate: improve the work• Don’t just reimplement• Improvement must

innovate•How to identify innovative requirements?•Pulling from Software Requirements 3rd Edition, K. Weigers, J. Beatty, Microsoft Press 2013

Some More Interview Guidance•Starting point: interview customer to see what they want•Ensuring good ideas:

1.Establish rapport at interview start• introduce yourself, review agenda & objectives, address preliminary

concerns2.Stay in scope: it will wander, but keep interview on target3.Prepare questions and straw models ahead of time

• Draft list of guiding questions• Prepare models of business process as you know them• It’s much easier to critique than draw from scratch!

4.Suggest ideas• Convince interviewee this is a joint problem solving session• Prompt interviewee with suggestions

5.Listen actively• Lean forward, show patience, clarify anything you find unclear• Replay central ideas by paraphrasing them!

Workshops•Structured meeting• Carefully selected stakeholders, context experts• Goal: create, define, refine, reach closure on deliverables•Encourage stakeholder collaboration•Tips:

1.Establish and enforce ground rules• start and end times, technologies, comments not criticism

2.Fill all of the team roles• Take notes, watch time, manage scope, enforce ground rules• Ensure everyone is heard!

3.Plan an agenda in advance4.Stay in scope: watch for diving into micro-details that eat

time

Workshops1.Use “Parking Lots” to capture items for later

consideration• Simple tool to help keep on track• Ensure have strategy to clear the lots

2.Timebox discussions• Limit time on any one topic• At end of time: summarize status and next steps, close

topic3.Keep the team small but include the right

stakeholders• Small groups are more effective• Use parallel workshops if > 5-6 stakeholders

4.Keep everyone engaged• If someone stops contributing, they may be frustrated• Facilitator's job: ensure everyone's voice is heard

Focus Groups•Representative group used to generate input, ideas•Can be used to explore attitudes, impressions, preferences, needs•Very valuable if cannot poll large group of end users•Include:• Users with experience in domain• Users with experience with similar products or earlier version

•Running a focus group takes training• Key: keep on topic, but don't influence opinions• Facilitators should have at least some training•Results: subjective feedback• Do not give these groups decision-making power

• Great for feedback from large groups, geographically dispersed

• Great for determining needs, preferences

• Especially helpful as input to future elicitation efforts

• Inexpensive?• Certainly simple to construct, administer• Difficult to design for good feedback, ensure large

participation

• Tips:• Don’t ask too many questions or people won’t respond• Provide answer options that cover the full set of possibilities• Always test a questionnaire before distributing it• Be careful of phrasing, don’t use leading questions

Surveys/Questionnaires

Role playing • Opportunity to experience work from another

perspective• Great when requirements depend on different classes

of users• Eg: students vs employees

• Process1. Set context2. Act out scenarios3. Brainstorm on ideas generated by role playing

Product Box Innovation Game • Excerpted from:

http://www.innovationgames.com/product-box/• Process:

1. Imagine you have a new product to sell2. What should be on the box?• Key slogans

3. What is on the front? Back? Sides?4. What would be on the boxes next to yours?

• Why?• Customers want to believe purchased product will

solve problems• These need to be the problems customers care about• Can use this with potential customers as a metaphor

for articulating this

Other techniques• Interview yourself• Great for small start-ups• Pretend to be interviewed by a reporter 5 years

from now• What are your successes? What were the

challenges?• Evaluate unintended uses• Are your users using your product differently than

the way you intended? • Evaluate customer-developed solutions

Review• Effective interviews• Rapport, scope, prep, suggestions, active listening

• Workshops• Ground rules, scope, parking lots, timebox

• Focus groups, surveys, questionnaires• Role playing• Product box innovation game• Interviews, unintended uses, customer solutions