Week 03 ToDos

1. Watch Lecture Videos

Watch the week 03 lecture videos in advance of your team meeting.

Videos
Stakeholder Analysis Video Slides
Talking with People Video Slides
Personas Video Slides
Elicitation Video Slides

Lecture References:
See Resources→References for instructions on how to access lecture references.

  • Karl Wiegers and Joy Beatty, Software Requirements, 3ed, Microsoft Press, 2013.
    • Chapter 2: Requirements from the customer’s perspective
    • Chapter 6: Finding the voice of the user
    • Chapter 7: Requirements elicitation
  • Ian F. Alexander, “A Taxonomy of Stakeholders: Human Roles in System Development” International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction, 2005, vol. 1, no. 1, 23-59
  • Giff Constable, Talking to Humans, 2014.
    • “How to Find Your Interview Subjects”
  • Stefan Blomkvist, “Persona–an Overview”, in Theoretical perspectives in human-computer interaction. Stockholm, IPLab, KTH, 2002.
  • Suzanne Robertson and James Robertson, Mastering the Requirements Process, 3ed., Addison-Wesley Professional, 2012.
    • Chapter 7: Understanding the Real Problem

2. Team Bonding and Participation

As a continuation of previous weeks’ efforts to start gelling as a team, spend 20 min working through the last batch of Fast Friends (distributed in class). Make your way through as many questions as you can; all team members should answer all of the questions that the team reaches during this time allotment.

Starting this week, we will be recording each person’s attendance at the in-person meetings. Eight marks are associated with being present at team meetings. These are in-class participation marks, not marks associated with contributing to the deliverable (team members are expected to contribute to all deliverables regardless if they missed a team meeting). The participation marks are designed to strongly encourage synchronous in-person team meetings, which is correlated with team bonding and good team intra-relationships.

3. Feedback on Buddy Team’s Problem-Fit Interviews

Each team will meet with another team to practice conducting your Problem-Fit Interviews on members of the other team, and provide feedback on your buddy teams’ Problem-Fit Interviews. In essence, you are conducting a Pilot Study of your interview plans, using classmates as practice subjects, before conducting your real interviews.

You should:

  1. Solicit feedback from your buddy team on your team’s hypotheses and interview questions.
  2. Practice delivering your interview, and solicit feedback on your delivery and interview script.
  3. Consider whether any of the buddy-team’s feedback (with respect to your project’s target customer segment, target problem, unique value proposition, or interview questions) are worth addressing and document any revisions to your problem-fit interview.
  4. Create a separate PDF («TeamName»_BuddyTeamFeedback.pdf) that includes the following information:
    • The names of your team members who participated in this activity
    • The name of the buddy team that you worked with on this activity, and the names of their team members who participated
    • Describe 2-3 concrete examples of feedback and suggestions for improvement that your team provided to your buddy team.
    • Describe 2-3 concrete examples of feedback and suggestions for improvement that your team received from your buddy team, and describe what changes your team made (e.g., to your project, lean canvas, interview script) in response to this feedback.
    • Indicate the quality of the feedback that your team received or the degree to which your buddy team participated in this activity (outstanding, excellent, very good, good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory)

Submit «TeamName»_BuddyTeamFeedback.pdf to LEARN.

Grading Scheme: This activity contributes 1 mark to your course grade (it is part of the marking scheme related to Feedback to Other Teams). It is marked on the basis of (1) Completeness and Clarify of your team’s writeup, and (2) how Actionable your team’s recommendations are (as expressed in your buddy team’s writeup). See the Week 3 Rubric for details. Note that only students who participate in this Buddy-Team Feedback activity get this mark.

4. Perform a Stakeholder Analysis

Identify and provide details about the stakeholders who might be interested in or impacted by your project. Identify at least 10 distinct relevant types of stakeholders. Your list must include at least 8 stakeholder types that are distinct from roles held by your team members; your list must include a champion stakeholder; no more than 5 stakeholder types can be distinct customer/user segments; and no more than one member of your team counts as a technical expert towards your goal of 10 stakeholders. For each stakeholder, provide

  • demographic information about customer/user stakeholder types (i.e., relevant user characteristics: age range, gender, occupation, education background, technical expertise, goals, etc.)
  • the type of stakeholder (as discussed in lecture)
  • how your team plans to contact such a stakeholder or a proxy
  • the kinds of information you expect to elicit from them

Organize your answer to this part of the deliverable in a Stakeholder Analysis Matrix. Include the result in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D3.pdf and submit it via LEARN.

Grading Scheme: This deliverable will be marked on the basis of (1) the Completeness of your stakeholder information and (2) the Relevance of your identified stakeholders. See the Week 3 Rubric for details.

5. Create Personas

You are to create two personas for the customer segments that have been identified as being the earliest adopters of your software project. Give priority to customer segments or variants that differ from who are you interviewing - especially customer segments or variants that are difficult to reach. Include details about their personal background and who they are, their technical background, their experiences (that affect their user characteristics), their drivers and goals, and the problems and pain points that they would like have addressed. Include your personas in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D3.pdf and submit it to LEARN.

Here are example Personas from the Modern Family project.

Grading Scheme: This deliverable will be marked on the basis of (1) the Completeness of the Personas, (2) the quality of the Presentation of the Personas, and (3) the relevance of the Personas with respect to your Targer Customer Segments. See the Week 3 Rubric for details.

6. Start Conducting Problem-Fit Interviews

Start recruiting at least five members of your project’s target customer segment to participate in Problem-Fit Interviews. Interviewees cannot be minors (i.e., must be a least 13 years of age) and cannot be close friends or family. Try to find target users beyond just fellow students. You must follow ethics procedure:

  • How you recruit interviewees will depend on what channels you use, but try as much as possible to use language from the Office of Research Ethics sample recruitment materials, to ensure that your approach is professional and ethical.
  • Use the provided Participant Information and Verbal Consent Form (without alteration) to collect verbal consent responses. Keep a record of the participants and their verbal-consent responses in a spreadsheet.
  • You CANNOT record the audio or video of your interviews, so keep good notes.
  • Your raw interview data must not have identifiable information about the participants.
  • Keep all of your raw interview data and your verbal-consent spreadsheet on a password-protected computer (data server or cloud services) in files that are private and viewable to your team only.

Your eventual writeup should include anonymized data about the interviewees (e.g., type of stakeholder, demographics). Provide a clear and professional summary of the results of the interviews (e.g., percentages of responses per test answer, insights learned). If your initial hypotheses are false, provide a pivot hypothesis.

Here is an example Problem-Fit Interview Analysis (including hypotheses, interview questions, and interview results) for the Modern Family project, which helps busy families in North America to stay connected and to coordinate timing of activities or sharing of resources while minimizing conflicts. The interview writeup is due on Monday, Feb 2.

Grading Scheme: The interview writeup will be marked on the basis of (1) the Completeness of the writeup, (2) the quality and appropriateness of your pivot hypotheses (if required), and (3) the professionalism of the presentation of the writeup.

7. (CS 645 only) Grad Lecture

If you are a graduate student (enrolled in CS645), then in addition to the regular course deliverables you are also expected to develop and deliver a lecture on some topic related to requirements engineering. The details about this deliverable are provided on the Syllabus→Grad Student Lectures page. This week, you should reach out to Byron Weber Becker regarding the topic of your lecture.

Due Next Monday (Jan 26, 8:59pm ET)

  • Every team: Create a single PDF named «TeamName»_BuddyTeamFeedback.pdf that includes the following and submit it to LEARN

    • Your Team Name and Team Members who participated in the BuddyTeam activity (week of Jan 19)
    • Team Name and Team Members of the buddy team who participated in the BuddyTeam activity, and the degree to which that team participated in your team’s exercises (outstanding, excellent, very good, good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory)
    • Information about your team’s feedback on other team’s Problem-Fit Interview
    • Buddy team’s feedback on your team’s Problem-Fit Interview and how your team responded to that feedback

  • Every team: Create a single PDF named «TeamName»_D3.pdf that includes the following, and submit it to LEARN

    • Stakeholder Analysis Matrix
    • Personas

  • (CS645 only) Decide on the topic of your Graduate Lecture