Week 04 ToDos

1. Watch Lecture Videos

Watch the week 04 lecture videos in advance of your team meeting.

Videos
Use Cases Video Slides
User Stories Video Slides

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

  • Karl Wiegers and Joy Beatty, Software Requirements, 3ed, Microsoft Press, 2013.
    • Chapter 8: Understanding user requirements
  • Craig Larman, Applying UML and Patterns, 3ed, Prentice Hall, 2004.
    • Chapter 6: Use Cases

2. Finish Conducting Problem-Fit Interviews and Write Up Results

Finish 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.

Analyze the data collected from your five interviews and create a PDF report that summarizes the results of the interviews and your analysis. This writeup should include anonymized data about the interviewees. This includes the type of stakeholder, type of customer segment, and demographics of the interviewee (e.g., gender, race, age, education, employment, level of experience). Provide a clear and professional summary of the results of the interviews (e.g., ratio (#responses/#interviewees) per test answer, insights learned). If your initial hypotheses are false, provide pivot hypotheses. Include your answer to this part of the deliverable in a PDF file named «TeamName»_D4.pdf and submit it to LEARN.

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

Grading Scheme: The interview writeup will be marked on the basis of (1) the Completeness of the writeup, (2) the Quality of your analysis of interview responses, and (3) the Professionalism of the presentation of the writeup. See the Week 4 Rubric for details.

3. Working with Other Teams, Elicit Innovative Features

Each team needs to pair up with one other team to work with synchronously this week. It should be different than the team you worked with last week.

Using one or more of the creativity-based elicitation techniques that lead to innovative requirements (i.e., systemic thinking, brainstorming, relaxation of constraints, analogical reasoning) identify at least two (2+) new innovative use cases for your project.

These elicitation techniques comprise two phases: (1) generating ideas for new features and capabilities, and (2) evaluating the generated ideas for their added value to the project’s existing use cases. Seek the input of your buddy team in generating (a minimum of 10, ideally 15-20) new use cases or features for your project, and help your buddy team elicit new use cases for their project. Later, working just with your team, evaluate the value propositions of the ideas generated for your project and whittle the number of ideas down to the 2+ new use cases that look to be the most promising additions to your project.

Create a separate PDF that describes the elicitation techniques that you used in eliciting innovative features and ideas for your project, lists all of the ideas that were generated, and identifies the 2+ new use cases that your team believes provide the highest value proposition. These 2+ new use cases need to be orthogonal to your existing use cases. Include in your answer

  • 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
  • The elicitation techniques that you and the buddy team used in this activity
  • Names and short descriptions of all the new use cases / features / extensions that your team and the buddy team elicited for your team’s project. Highlight the two use cases that your team believes provide the highest value proposition and explain the rationale of your choice.
  • Describe the degree to which your buddy team participated in your team’s elicitation exercises (outstanding, excellent, very good, good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory)

Include your answer to this part of the deliverable in a separate PDF file named «TeamName»_Elicitation.pdf and submit it to LEARN.

Here is the write-up from the Modern Family project.

Grading Scheme of Elicitation Activity: This submission is worth 1 point of your course grade (it is part of the marking scheme related to Feedback to Other Teams). The writeup will be marked on the basis of the (1) Completeness and Clarity of your team’s writeup, including elicitation techniques employed, ideas generated, and final outcome of your selection; (2) the Number of generated ideas for new features of your team project; and (3) degree of Relevance and Orthogonality of the proposed new features to your project’s target customers, target problem, and unique value proposition. See the Week 4 Rubric for details. Note that only students who participate in this Buddy-Team Feedback activity get this mark.

4. Use Case Diagram

Provide a complete Use Case diagram for your project, including all adjacent systems and entities. There should be 3+ use cases and should not include any of the 2+ new use cases from the Elicitation exercise above. Your project at this stage needs to be rich enough to support 3+ use cases. Create your use-case diagram using a drawing or modelling tool that enables real-time collaboration with 5 users (e.g., LucidChart, draw.io). Supplement your diagram with a short description of each use case, explaining what that use case is about, and a short description of each actor. Include your diagram and use-case descriptions in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D4.pdf and submit it to LEARN.

Here is an example Use Case Diagram for the Modern Family.

Grading Scheme: Your Use Case Diagram and descriptions will be marked on the basis of (1) the Completeness and Correctness of your use-case diagram, (2) the level of detail of your use-case diagram (see examples from the lecture slides and past terms), and (3) the Completeness and Clarity of the supplemental descriptions. See the Week 4 Rubric for details.

5. User Stories

From the set of use cases in your use-case diagram (and not the newly proposed use cases from the Elicitation activity above), articulate each use case as a set of user stories. There should be at least 2-3 user stories per use case. Each user story should cover some important step or phase of the use case, or should reflect the use case from the point of view of different user classes of your target early-adopter customer segment(s). Include your user stories in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D4.pdf and submit it to LEARN.

Here are example User Stories for the Modern Family project.

Grading Scheme: Your User Stories will be marked on the basis of the Completeness and Consistency of the stories with respect to other artifacts associated with your project (in particular, the use-case diagram and descriptions), and the degree to which your stories adhere to the expected syntax and level of detail for User Stories. See the Week 4 Rubric for details.

6. Team Health Survey

Now that we’re almost half way through the term and you have this week and Reading Week to think about how your team is working, we are asking all team members to individually complete a Team Health Survey. This is to check how well the team is functioning so far and whether the team’s processes can be improved. The Team Health Survey is to be completed by every member of your team, but individual responses to the Team Health Survey will not be noted or shared. Rather, your team will be provided with your team’s average responses to all survey questions and with the class’s average responses, so that you can see your team’s strengths and weaknesses compared to the rest of the class. If there are weaknesses in your team’s processes, now is the time to address them. The course instructor and TAs would be happy to assist in any discussions on how to improve your team’s processes or on updating your Team Contract.

Grading Scheme: The survey is marked out of 0..1 and is graded only with respect to Completeness (i.e., percentage of answered questions). There is no right and wrong answer for the survey; students should complete the survey by providing an honest opinion about what they think. This is worth 1 point towards your course mark, as part of the Teamwork section.

Due Next Monday (Feb. 2, 8:59pm ET)

  • Every student: Complete the online Team Health Survey
  • Every Team: Create a single PDF named «TeamName»_Elicitation.pdf that includes the following and submit it to LEARN
    • Your Team Name and Team Members who participated in the BuddyTeam exercise (week of Jan. 26)
    • Team Name and Team Members of the other team who participated in the BuddyTeam exercise, and the degree to which that team participated in your team’s exercises (outstanding, excellent, very good, good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory)
    • List of elicited novel requirements, with two highlighted
  • Every Team: Create a single PDF named «TeamName»_D4.pdf that includes the following, and submit it to LEARN
    • Report on the Analysis and Results of your Problem-Fit Interviews
    • Use-Case Diagram and supplemental descriptions
    • User Stories
  • Every Outgoing Team Leader: (Due Thursday, 8:59pm via LEARN)
    • Submit «TeamName»_PeerEval_1.pdf