[Colloq] Hiring Talk, Thursday, February 5, 12:00

[Rachel Bates]

College of Computer and Information Science Colloquium
presents
   Mark Bergman
  who will speak on:
In Situ Requirements Analysis: A Deeper Examination of the Relationship
between Requirements Determination and Project Selection


Thursday, February 5, 2004
12:00pm
149 Cullinane Hall
Northeastern University

ABSTRACT
There has been sparse study of how requirements analysis is performed in
situ, i.e. by organizations building large, complex systems. I assert that a
better understanding of in situ requirements practice is necessary to
improve and ground current theories of requirements analysis. I performed an
empirical field study to examine in detail the issues faced by practitioners
in forming and stabilizing system requirements and the procedures they
created to overcome them. I found that the process of requirements
determination was intimately related to project selection. I further
observed that these two processes were based on the interplay of 1) applied
technical, project, and organizational authority with 2) design,
sensemaking, and negotiation activity. The ethnography produced an
idealized, grounded Authority-Activity Model of requirements analysis and
project selection. The model represents a generalized form of requirements
analysis-project selection for large, complex, risk adverse (highly
sensitive to failure) projects. It represents a method to balance the
differentiated authority of the stakeholder groups with the activities
necessary to form and stabilize technology-project candidates and their
related requirements. I argue that the core issues addressed in this field
study are generalizable across organizations that build large, complex
systems and hence, the results of this study form a basis for a general
theory of systems requirements analysis practice.

Biography
Mark Bergman is a researcher at the School of Information and Computer
Science (ICS) within the University of California, Irvine (UCI). His
research interests are in the areas of system design lifecycle processes -
especially in the areas of requirements analysis and system design
management. He has further interests in computer supported cooperative work
(CSCW) and socio-technical organizational strategy. He has a B.S. (1983)
from the University of California, Berkeley in EECS (Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science), a M.S. (1997) and a Ph.D. (2003) from the University
of California, Irvine in ICS (Information and Computer Science). He has
worked for over 10 years in Silicon Valley (Cupertino and Mountain View, CA)
companies in between getting his B.S. and M.S. He has been employed at
Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and Tandem Computers in a variety of
roles, including: software engineer, quality assurance engineer, first line
project manager and consultant. He is a member in good standing of the
following professional organizations: ACM, AIS, AOM, ASQ, IEEE, INCOSE,
INFORMS, and SMS.

Host: Carole Hafner