2003 UK Spring Symposium
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2003 UK Spring Symposium
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| Morning | Afternoon |
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The Use of Requirements from Elicitation to Seeing their Consequences
for Mining Marbles in Centistan
by Giles Gibson, Andrew Beckett and Bob Dale of MBDA |
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An Introduction to The Human Factors Assessment Method , by Dr Ron McLeod of Nickleby HFE Ltd - |
| Real-Time UML for Systems Engineers by Matthew Hause, Francis Thom; Artisan Software Tools | |
| Using boilerplates to express requirement statements , by Jeremy Dick, Ken Jackson of Telelogic | A Requirements Surgery: bring-and-discuss your problem requirements by Jeremy Dick, Ken Jackson of Telelogic |
| Application of standards to existing processes , by Brass Bullet . | Process modelling, tailoring and standard conformance , by Brass Bullet . |
The presenters have a combined 70 years of Systems Engineering experience in the defence and aerospace sector. All now work for MBDA, the Anglo/Franco/Italian missile supplier. Projects they have worked on range from a control system for Concorde, through various sensors for missiles and military aircraft, to whole weapon systems. They have experience of working with a Customer to define his need (or even working in advance of finding a customer) through to trying to convince a customer to pay for the developed product. The presenters devised this exercise to show how requirements influence the whole project lifecycle.
The workshop encourages attendees to write better requirements by developing an appreciation of the whole requirement life cycle.
The attendees of this workshop will gain practical experience of:-
How requirements are gathered from a variety of sources
How requirements and design are affected by information beyond the customers written requirements
How requirements are analysed and tested against a candidate solution
Why the prime contractor needs to understand the subcontractors risks
How the quality of requirements affects the resulting product
How the acceptability of the final product is dependent on the customers objectives being fulfilled
The exercise also allows attendees to:-
Elicit what a customer needs
Write requirements for a subcontractor
See the effects of the requirements on the resulting design
See the customer's reaction to the design
(The exercise does not cover the use of Requirements Management tools.)
The workshop is structured as a practical exercise. The participants are split to form two competing teams. Through the course of the day the competition is to see which team can earn the most money. The biggest determinant of who wins is the manner in which each team uses requirements.
The day is an intense and time pressured, yet light-hearted, experience. In the morning the teams act as prime contractors on two different products related to the Centistani industry of mining marbles. They elicit requirements from a variety of sources and prepare a set of requirements that are delivered to a subcontractor. In the afternoon the teams act as those subcontractors; they build and install the product in Centistan and demonstrate it to the prime contractor. As the last part of the exercise, the prime contractor then has to sell the product to the original customer. Finally, the successes and failures experienced by the teams are discussed. The presenters act as the customers and as consultants to the teams.
The exercise can be summarised as follows:
The workshop is aimed at experienced systems engineers but would also be of benefit to experienced software, electronic and mechanical design engineers and project managers. It is applicable to all industries where bespoke products are developed. No domain knowledge is required but practical skills to Blue Peter badge 2 would be an asset.
As the two teams will meet quite different problems during the exercise, two participants from the same company will go away with complementary experiences.
The workshop is designed to be run with a group of 8 to 12 people.
The workshop requires two neighbouring conference rooms. Each room must be capable of being used as a workshop seating 8 people with 3 square metres of table space and flip charts or whiteboard. Additionally, one room will be used for plenary sessions, seating 15 people in a lecture style and should have a projection screen.
Where possible, some course material relating to the exercise will be e-mailed to attendees prior to the workshop. The remainder will be given as appropriate during the day.
Notes on the likely problems encountered during, and lessons learned from, the workshop will be available for the closing session.
The HSE Offshore Safety Division (OSD) has been seeking to develop means of establishing whether equipment intended for use offshore can be considered to be "inherently safe" because of the way it was designed and developed. Specifically, there is a desire to push assessment of whether risk has been reduced to levels which are ALARP earlier into the design process.
On behalf of the HSE, Nickleby HFE Ltd conducted a programme of research to improve identification and management of human-related issues during the design and development of offshore platforms and systems. The aim was to provide a straightforward means of assessing where an organisation stands with respect to 'best practice' in applying Human Factors in the development of new or modified equipment, platforms or systems. The model was intended to be used by HSE Inspectors, or by company's wishing either to improve their own processes or to assess the competence of their suppliers. The aim was to ground the approach in the existing framework of Capability Maturity Models.
The resulting Human Factors Assessment Method (HFAM) is a practical method, supported by case studies and other material, for assessing whether organisations involved in the UK offshore industry adopt good practice in taking account of human issues when designing or making significant changes to equipment or processes. The method has proven to be relevant, useful and easy to apply and has been well received by the offshore, and on-shore process industries. Interest in the method has been expressed from other industries, including rail, maritime and defence.
The aim of the tutorial is to provide sufficient introduction to the HFAM method to allow delegates to prepare to conduct an assessment of their own organizations or suppliers.
Delegates will be provided a pack containing the information and material needed to conduct an HFAM assessment.
Ron McLeod has a degree in Psychology, an MSc in Ergonomics and a PhD in Engineering and Applied Science. He has over 20 years experience applying knowledge, principles and techniques from ergonomics and applied psychology to the analysis, specification and design of work systems. With a particular emphasis on development processes, the management of human factors programmes, analysis of requirements and human factors evaluation, Ron has extensive experience applying human factors in the development of complex socio-technical systems. He has worked in defence, rail, offshore, financial services, power generation, space and the telecommunications industries.
Ron has written and contributed to over 100 technical reports, including research reports, requirements specifications, design specifications and test and acceptance reports. He has published scientific papers in refereed journals, including Perception, Ergonomics, Aerospace and Environmental Medicine and the Journal of Sound and Vibration.
Ron is a member of the DTIs National Advisory Committee on Human Factors and was a member of the Psychology User Panel for RAE 2001. He is a member of the Steering Committee for the National Grid for Learning Scotland and has recently been appointed to the EPSRC College tasked with assisting EPSRC in reviewing and advising on funding of academic research projects.
The tutorial should be of interest to anybody who has a responsibility for safety management or engineering programmes, in any industry.
The tutorial will be suitable for a maximum of 15 delegates.
This 1-day tutorial will introduce Systems Engineers into the practical application of the Unified Modelling Language (UML) specifically for Systems Engineering. It will initially look at the whole of the UML and then introduce (with an on-going Cruise Control Case Study) the specific areas of the UML that are of interest to Systems Engineers.
To provide an understanding of the principals of object technology
To enable attendees to integrate object-oriented modeling techniques into a development process
To give attendees the confidence to apply these new concepts to their project
To provide attendees with an understanding of how the real-time extensions enable Systems Engineers to communicate their requirements to both customer and hardware and software engineers
Demonstrate using UML for systems engineering of safety critical/mission critical systems, including UML traceability and integration with requirements tools.
Provide a practical example of trade-off analysis of competing solution spaces.
Approximately 50% of the course involves practical application of the techniques. Attendees work in small groups to complete a number of worked examples, providing hands-on experience of applying the techniques and familiarity with the concepts. Use is made of ARTiSANs Real-time Studio to facilitate an understanding of developed designs. All examples are based on real-world, real-time systems.
This tutorial has run at INCOSE UK Spring Symposium 2001 & 2002. Since then an extended 3-day Tutorial was developed and has been successfully delivered as a public course and to several companies.
Essential object-oriented concepts and terminology
Object-oriented modeling techniques using UML
How to apply object-oriented principles and techniques in the development of systems
How to apply an object-oriented based incremental approach to systems development
How UML provides traceability from requirements to implementation
Attendee Handbook
All worked examples and solutions
Systems Engineers embarking on a project using object-oriented Analysis and Design for the first time.
Some understanding of object-oriented modeling techniques is helpful, but not necessary. An understanding of systems engineering principals.
2 complementary half day sessions:
To present an approach to expressing requirements using reusable boilerplates.
To facilitate a discussion on the approach through the use of a workshop example.
To encourage systems engineers to use and contribute to a common repository of boilerplates.
The concept of using boilerplates for writing statements of requirement is quite simple: choose an appropriate predefined template, and fill in the gaps. Each statement of requirement then becomes a generic boilerplate plus the specific values of selected attributes. Using this approach, an organisation can gradually refine a repertoire of ways of expressing all the kinds of requirement it needs. By encouraging engineers always to choose from the repertoire, a uniformity of style can be achieved in the organisation. (See also www.requirementsengineering.info/boilerplates.htm)
This tutorial follows on from the morning topic of requirements boilerplates. The boilerplate approach will be applied to real examples brought along by attendees.
Summary of results by email following the surgery.
2 half day sessions:
Many of us work to documented processes and find ourselves in a position where there is a need to justify our practices in the context of a project. This tutorial explains a technique using the UML as a medium to make that justification. The tutorial consists of a short presentation followed by an interactive examples session.
Documented processes are essential for virtually all aspects of engineering and to reflect their validity in the workplace they should co-exist with international standards. This tutorial is aimed at those documenting their processes. The emphasis is on how to design processes that not only conform to standards but also adhere as closely as possible to existing practices.
Last Updated: 13 April, 2003