Week 06 ToDos

1. Watch Lecture Videos

Watch the week 06 lecture videos in advance of your team meeting.

Videos
Risk Management Video Slides
Scope Creep Video Slides
Prioritizing Requirements 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 5: Establishing the business requirements
    • Chapter 16: First Things First: Setting Requirements Priorities
    • Chapter 28: Change happens
    • Chapter 32: Software Requirements and Risk Management
  • Joachim Karlsson and Kevin Ryan, “A Cost-Value Approach for Prioritizing Requirements.” in IEEE Software, vol. 14, no. 5 (Sep. 1997), pp. 67-74.

2026-02-04: Byron and Tales will be available during class time to serve as interviewees. This reduces the number of outside interviewees that you need to find from 5 to 3. You will need to come to class prepared to conduct the interviews.

2. Quality Requirements Interviews

Elicit the quality requirements for your project. Specifically, interview at least five members of your project’s target customer segments regarding the quality requirements of your project. You may re-interview the same people that you interviewed previously or you may recruit new participants. Just remember that, if you recruit new participants for your interview, the interviewees cannot be minors under the age of 13 and cannot be close friends or family of the members of your team. Try to find target users beyond fellow students. You must follow ethics procedures:

  • 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 interviews will ask customers to prioritize the quality attributes that your team previously hypothesized as being most important to your project, and will also ask each interviewee to provide fit criteria for their respective top-three quality attributes.

Specifically, ask the interviewees to use the 100-Dollar Prioritization technique to prioritize the six quality attributes that your team hypothesized as being the most important to your project. The interviewees should prioritize the quality attributes with respect to their importance (i.e., the business value added or the penalty avoided if the requirement is implemented). Your answer should show (1) the names and descriptions of the quality attributes being prioritized, (2) a breakdown of the number of dollars distributed by each interviewee to each of the six quality attributes, (3) the sum of dollars distributed to each quality attribute, and (4) a short summary of results (just 2-3 sentences) that translates the results into a total ordering of the priority among the six quality attributes and comments on their relative priority.

In addition, use these interviews to elicit from all interviewees their rich fit criteria for their respective top-three quality attributes. Thus, each interviewee need only provide rich fit criteria for their three top-priority quality attributes – even though this means you are collecting rich fit criteria for different quality attributes from different interviewees. Do not allow your interviewees to provide unrealistic rich fit criteria (e.g., 0 security breaches, 0ms response time). Without leading the interviewee to particular rich fit criteria, try to manage their expectations with respect to what is possible in software.

Your answer should show (1) each interviewee’s rich fit criteria for their respective top-three quality attributes, (2) the mean averages of all the interviewees’ rich fit criteria and their standard deviations (use sample standard deviation), organized as one rich-fit criteria table per quality attribute, and (3) a short summary assessment, based on the standard deviations, stating whether more interviews should be solicited to gain greater confidence in the elicited rich fit criteria. You do not need to provide interview questions, as you did with the problem-fit interviews. For the quality-requirements interviews, the questions are (1) the 100-dollar prioritization question, and (2) the rich fit criteria table to be filled in. Here is an example writeup of quality-requirements interviews from the Modern Family project.

Place your writeup in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D6.pdf and submit it to LEARN.

Grading Scheme: This writeup will be marked on the basis of (1) the Completeness and Presentation of the writeup of the prioritization interview results, and (2) the Completeness and Presentation of the rich fit criteria interview results. See the Week6 rubric for details.

3. Kano Prioritization of Use Cases

Elicit the priorities of your project’s use cases. Specifically, interview at least five members of your project’s target customer segments regarding the priorities of your project’s use cases. You may re-interview the same people that you interviewed previously or you may recruit new participants. (See to-do item #2 for instructions on recruiting new participants for interviews.) Presumably, you will interview the same participants that you interview regarding the quality requirements of your project.

For this task, use the Kano Prioritization technique to prioritize the use cases in your latest Use-Case Diagram (submitted as part of your Week #5 deliverables). Ask interviewees for their perceptions of your project including each use case (i.e., their Kano functional assessment) and their perceptions of your project excluding each use case (i.e., their Kano dysfunctional assessment).

Your answer should include (1) short descriptions of all use cases, (2) each stakeholder’s individual answers to the Kano questions, so that the TAs have the raw data from your interviews (keeping the identities of the interviewees anonymous). Reporting this data in tabular format is fine, with explanations of the table’s row and column headers. (3) Compute the average Functional and Dysfunctional values for each use case, (4) plot the average and sample standard deviation of each use case on a categorization plane, and (5) provide a short summary assessment of the elicited priorities of your project’s use cases that concludes with a total ordering of the priority among your project’s use cases and comments on their relative priority. Here is an example writeup of Kano prioritization interviews from the Modern Family project.

Place your writeup in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D6.pdf and submit it to LEARN.

Grading Scheme: This writeup will be marked on the basis of the Completeness of the Kano prioritization interviews (data and results), the Categorization Plane visualization of interview results, and on the Completeness and Correctness of the summary assessment of total priority among use cases and the relative priorities. See the Week6 rubric for details.

4. Risk Management

Perform a risk analysis of your project, including computing the Risk Criticalities and Losses of Objective of your use cases due to four risks. To manage those risks, identify four promising countermeasures and compute the Combined Risk Reduction and the Overall Single Effect of Countermeasures for those countermeasures, and draw the Mitigated Risks Graph.

Specifically, in a Risk Consequence Table, consider the use cases in your updated use-case diagram as the requirements for your project. Identify four risks that your team believes are the greatest threats to your project’s requirements being achievable. These risks might be shortfalls in adjacent systems, shortfalls in components being used, improper or unexpected inputs to your system, exceptions, insufficient resources, etc. To the best of your ability, estimate the likelihood of each risk actually occurring. Also estimate the impact that each risk has on each requirement. Compute the Loss of Objective for each requirement, and compute the Risk Criticality for each risk. Record your Risk Consequence Table in an Excel spreadsheet that shows (using formulas) how the losses of objectives and the risk criticalities are computed. Below the Table, provide a short description of each risk plus a short rationale for your estimate of the likelihood of each risk. For each requirement, for the risk that you estimate has the highest impact on this requirement, explain your rationale for your impact estimate for this risk. You can use the Consequence worksheet of the provided Risk Management Excel spreadsheet to record your Risk Consequence Table and supporting documentation.

Next, devise four countermeasures that have the potential to reduce the risks identified above. The countermeasures should each mitigate multiple risks, and there should be countermeasures that reduce the risks with the highest criticalities. To the best of your ability, estimate the effect of each countermeasure in reducing each of the risks. Compute the Overall Single Effect of each countermeasure and compute the Combined Risk Reduction for each risk. Record your Risk Countermeasures Table in a Excel worksheet that shows (using formulas) how the Overall Single Effects of countermeasures and the Combined Risk Reductions are computed. Below the Table, in the same worksheet, provide a short description of each countermeasure. For each countermeasure, for the risk that you estimate is mitigated the most by this countermeasure, explain your rationale for your impact estimate for this countermeasure. You can use the Countermeasures worksheet of the provided Risk Management Excel spreadsheet to record your Risk Countermeasures Table and supporting documentation.

Finally, choose an optimal subset (half) of countermeasures that, when applied, reduces and balances the risk profile. For each risk, compute the mitigated risk criticality that results from applying the chosen countermeasures. Explain your reasoning for choosing this set of countermeasures, and show how each mitigated-risk-criticality value is computed. (In a real software project, these countermeasures would be additional use cases, features, or extensions to your project’s Use Case Diagram and would be added to the project’s backlog.) Provide a bar chart that visualizes the risk exposure of your project both before and after applying the chosen countermeasures – that is, show for each risk the original and the mitigated risk criticality (a la slide 23 of the Risk Management lecture).

Here are example Risk Consequence and Risk Countermeasure Tables from the Modern Family project, as well as their mitigated risk writeup.

Place your Risk Consequence Table (plus documentation) and your Risk Countermeasures Table (plus documentation) in separate worksheets of a single Excel spreadsheet file named «TeamName»_Risks.xlsx and submit it to LEARN. Place your Mitigated Risk writeup and Chart in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D6.pdf and submit it to LEARN.

Grading Scheme: This writeup will be marked on the basis of (1) the Completeness and Correctness of your Risk Consequence Table, including the Quality of the accompanying descriptions and rationales; (2) the Completeness and Correctness of your Risk Countermeasures Table, including the Quality of the accompanying descriptions and rationales; (3) the Completeness and Correctness of your mitigated risk criticality computations and graph, including the Quality of the accompanying explanations and rationales. See the Week6 rubric for details.

Due Monday After Reading Week (Feb. 23, 8:59pm ET)

  • Every team: Create a single PDF named «TeamName»_D6.pdf that includes the following, and submit it to LEARN
    • Analysis of Quality Requirements Interviews
    • Analysis of Requirements Prioritization Interviews
    • Mitigated Risk Criticality writeup
  • Every team: Create a single Excel spreadsheet named «TeamName»_Risks.xlsx that includes the following, and submit it to the Deliverable 6 Dropbox on LEARN
    • Team Name
    • Risk Consequence Table and supporting descriptions and rationales
    • Risk Countermeasures Table and supporting descriptions and rationales
  • Every Outgoing Team Leader: (Due Thursday, 8:59pm via LEARN)
    • Submit «TeamName»_PeerEval_2.pdf