8th Intl. Workshop on Requirements Engineering Education & Training REET ’14: Workshop Proposal Birgit Penzenstadler Dieter Landes Sarah Gregory Donald Bren School of Informatics & University of Applied Sciences Emergent Systems and Coaching Computer Sciences Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Intel Corporation University of California, Irvine Informatics Santa Clara, California, USA Irvine, California, USA Coburg, Germany sarah.c.gregory@intel.com bpenzens@uci.edu dieter.landes@hs-coburg.de Workshop Title—   The Eigth International Workshop on presentations that offer innovative strategies or proposals to Requirements Engineering Education and Training address some of the challenges in RE Education and (REET’14). Training. Given the breadth of industrial disciplines where In conjunction with the 22nd International Requirements RE is relevant, how are academic institutions addressing Engineering Conference (RE’14). questions of curriculum? In which department(s) should RE reside? What are the practical differences between teaching I. MOTIVATION AND OBJECTIVES OF THE WORKSHOP RE to prospective business analysts and future engineers? Within industry, how might RE education and training be offered to practitioners who may be quite proficient in their Effective Requirements Engineering (RE) is increasingly primary disciplines but find themselves less confident when recognized as a critical component in the success of they must specify requirements for a project or product? software, product, service, and platform development Both academia and industry face challenges that projects. Although RE is traditionally rooted in software globalization brings. What techniques are effective to teach engineering, RE methods and practices are applicable across specification in the context of a multilingual university or a variety of industrial disciplines. Practitioners ranging from corporation? What opportunity – and risk – does distance business analysts through electrical engineers, mechanical education offer to students and practitioners of RE? engineers, interface designers, and many others find RE techniques invaluable. As a result, university curricula in In addition to topics related to curriculum development, multiple fields are beginning to address RE skills as a innovative contributions related to pedagogical techniques foundational skill set within their disciplines. Furthermore, for teaching RE skills are strongly encouraged. These skills many industrial organizations are recognizing the need to include: requirements elicitation, modeling, analysis, conflict develop RE related training programs as part of their negotiation, consensus building, requirements specification ongoing process improvement initiatives. writing, verification, and change management. Submissions could take the form of experience reports or demonstrations Expanding on the success of seven previous workshops on of specific teaching techniques and training materials. Requirements Engineering Education and Training (REET 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012), this workshop will address issues related to RE education, both Workshop Themes as part of a formal university degree and as ongoing skills training within the workplace. With this workshop, the eigth in the series, we hope to focus especially on the perceived • Curriculum for industrial training and education gap between academia and industry. How can our academic programs (including but not limited to software colleagues better prepare their students to enter the engineering) workforce with strong RE skills, including potential to lead • Curriculum for undergraduate and graduate RE and develop the practice when they enter the workforce? courses REET’14 is intended to go much deeper than a surface • Alternative pedagogical techniques, including discussion of general curriculum issues and will examine online learning, instructor-led distance learning, specific ideas and techniques for teaching and assessing and asynchronous instruction in both academic and skills needed to effectively engineer requirements in a industrial contexts variety of contexts. • Identifying and incorporating specific RE related topics into nontraditional (non-software or business Following the theme of RE’14, “Innovation in and through analysis) curricula Requirements Engineering”, REET ’14 elicits papers and • Further advancement of RE education and training individuals who are expected to author requirements within software and business analysis disciplines specifications, but never received the requisite training in their own academic programs. Students in a wide range of Techniques and topics for teaching specific RE related disciplines find RE a useful complement to their studies, skills and practices explored in academia may well offer industry insights into how to address gaps in knowledge among • Creative methods for teaching stakeholder practitioners. identification, requirements elicitation, analysis and validation, specification, and verification. REET is uniquely situated as the one annual forum where • Specific tools, exercises, and assignments students, faculty, and practitioners from multiple disciplines developed to support RE skills training and different work or study environments can come together • Assessment methods and practices of RE to discuss best practices in developing and disseminating knowledge and skills, and when to use which training and education in RE. method • Strategies for assessment of learning soft skills III. PAPER FORMAT, CONTRIBUTIONS, AND EVALUATION • Addressing skill mismatches or gaps between graduating students and industry needs in practice • Studies into the effectiveness of various RE Position papers (3-5 pages) educational practices • Experience reports including industrial training and Short papers will state the position of the author(s) on any of university level curriculum the topics within the scope of the workshop. For example, positions papers could describe experiences with a particular Potential expected outcomes: method for teaching an RE related skill, or could describe an innovative approach to incorporating RE education into the The primary objectives of the REET’14 workshop are to: degree curriculum. Position papers will be evaluated based on their potential for generating discussion, and on the • Identify core RE skills that should be incorporated originality of the positions expressed. into the curriculum at various levels and to outline feasible RE curricula Full papers (8-10 pages): • Exchange ideas on techniques, exercises, and tools for teaching specific RE related skills Full papers will describe RE educational techniques, survey • Improve understanding of effective RE teaching results, or experiential reports. For example, a full paper practices might describe a specific technique for teaching an RE skill • Share RE educational resources with one another and include a case study describing its implementation and evaluation of its effectiveness as well as lessons learnt. As II. TARGET AUDIENCE another example, a full paper might describe a mature tool This workshop is open to the public. The session can for supporting RE training. accommodate up to 35 people. The following types of attendees are particularly encouraged to attend: Requirements Teaching or Training Activity • Educators currently teaching or planning on Pedagogical papers will describe a teaching activity and teaching RE courses provide all of the materials needed to reproduce that activity • Academics intending to integrate RE content into in the classroom. Authors of full and position papers, plus existing more generalized courses anyone else interested in attending the workshop are • Practitioners interested in developing or improving encouraged to submit an RE activity. RE activities will be RE training and education in the work place documented using a predefined format, and will focus on one or more RE skills, define target audience and learning goals, Our intent is to advertise to and attract a broad cross-section provide step-by-step guidelines for conducting the activity, of individuals with an interest in advancing the practice of include student hand-outs or associated slides, describe the teaching methods and practices of Requirements context of the activity, and briefly comment on its prior use Engineering. The diverse backgrounds of the workshop in the classroom. organizers afford connections in academia, consulting, and industry, with access to business analysts, engineers, strategic planners, human factors and usability personnel, Evaluation Process and multiple other roles in which RE practices are A committee of approximately 10 reviewers from both necessary. Within industry, we often face challenges of industry and academia will provide 2-3 peer reviews for each paper. Candidate Program Committee members have been VII. HISTORY OF THE WORKSHOP identified, and their participation will be secured pending acceptance of the workshop proposal itself. REET 2005 1st International Workshop on Requirements For REET’14, we intend to comprise approximately half of Engineering Education and Training the Program Committee (10-12 people) with individuals who 30th August 2006, Paris (no count available) have participated in this capacity before, both from industry and academia. We plan to include other Program Committee REET 2007 members who have not previously served. Through this 2nd International Workshop on Requirements balance, we will both expand the breadth of participants in Engineering Education and Training the workshop’s design and evaluation, as well as continue to 15th October 2007, New Delhi (~15 participants) expand the reach of RE Education and Training discussion into other academic contexts and industrial settings. REET 2008 3rd International Workshop on Requirements IV. WORKSHOP FORMAT Engineering Education and Training REET’14 will be an interactive workshop, combining 9th September 2008, Barcelona (~20 participants) presentations of accepted papers with demonstrations of pedagogical techniques and practices. Sufficient time will be REET 2009 allocated to allow for discussion between presentations. 4th International Workshop on Requirements Attendees of previous REET workshops have found the Engineering Education and Training opportunities afforded for networking between academic and 31st August 2009, Atlanta (~25 participants) industrial participants to be especially helpful, and we plan to continue to facilitate such discussions in REET’14. REET 2010 V. WORKSHOP PAPER PUBLISHING PLANS 5th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Education and Training Papers delivered at REET’14 will be published with CEUR WS proceedings. In addition, we will offer the 28th September 2010, Sydney (13 participants) opportunity for participants and presenters to share resources, including pedagogical best practice REET 2011 presentations and other job aids, with workshop attendees 6th International Workshop on Requirements via an online forum established to distribute work to Engineering Education and Training registered attendees. Teaching materials, photographs or 29th August 2011, Trento (13 participants) videos that demonstrate techniques in practice, and discussions about pedagogical practices will be enabled REET 2012 via this forum. 7th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Education and Training VI. DURATION OF THE WORKSHOP 24th September 2012, Chicago (12 participants) REET’14 will be a one-day session. Each REET workshop held at previous RE conferences has expanded the scope of knowledge and practice for its attendees. Participants in previous REET workshops have commented on the unique balance of paper presentation and practical, hands-on pedagogical experimentation that is a hallmark of this particular workshop. Anecdotally, we are aware that some of the activities taught during previous REET sessions have been replicated in both corporate and academic settings. A paper delivered in 2009 discussing distance learning with a group of students in Iran led to an attendee’s development and pilot of a distance learning course in Requirements Specification within a corporate environment. For REET’14, we will contact previous participants in REET sessions and elicit specific information on lessons learned, as well as questions needing further exploration to continue to advance both the practice as well as further collaboration between academia and industry in our shared pursuit of improving the quality and consistency of RE Birgit Penzenstadler (bpenzens@uci.edu) Education and Training. Birgit Penzenstadler is a postdoc at the University of VIII. WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS California, Irvine. She did her PhD in the area of REET’14 will be organized and facilitated by three RE requirements engineering at Technische Universität professionals with distinctly different professional roles, but München (TUM), where she also lead research projects with who share a common passion for developing and sharing BMW, Daimler, Siemens, Bosch, Lufthansa, and others. She best practices in Requirements Engineering. has organized and moderated events of over 100 participants from different domains at TUM. Sarah Gregory (sarah.c.gregory@intel.com) She has been teaching Requirements Engineering at university for a few years and has participated and published Sarah Gregory is a Senior Platform Methodologist at Intel at earlier REET workshops. Corporation, focused on research, development, and piloting of practices in Requirements Engineering. Since 2006, she Dieter Landes (dieter.landes@hs-coburg.de) has had primary responsibility for deployment of the corporate RE training curriculum within Intel, including Dieter Landes is a full professor at the University of instructor development and evolution of the RE curriculum Applied Sciences since 1999. He did a PhD on knowledge- to better suit a global workforce. Since 2000, over 14,000 based systems at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. participants have attended one or more of Intel’s internally- Outside academia, he worked several years as a software developed seminar-style courses introducing RE practices, engineer, project manager, consultant, and researcher in representing many different roles, backgrounds, and several companies, e.g. Daimler. He is teaching requirements professional disciplines. Sarah’s research interests include engineering for more than ten years and currently leads a interpretive challenges among authors and readers in a large interdisciplinary research project that is devoted to the multilingual company, and instructor-led distance learning as improvement of education in software and requirements a pedagogical practice in a global corporate environment. engineering. He also serves on the program committees of Sarah was a participant in REET ‘08, REET ‘09, REET ‘10, several international conferences on various aspects of and REET ‘11. software and requirements engineering