Abstract: Everyone recognizes the long term benefits of having well defined requirements yet all too often there are numerous obstacles and challenges that often can negatively impact the success of requirements definition and management. These imperfections can create ripples of disruption and additional cost across the life of a project or product. The Requirements Management & Definition presentation will introduce proven best practices for establishing the ability to define, manage and certify system or project requirements to make sure that IT and the business are aligned. The presentation will include: requirements terminology, process differences between requirements management and engineering or development, fundamental management principles, CMMI process areas, identifying stakeholders, gathering and defining requirements, validating requirements, prioritization, risk avoidance and more. Learn where you'll get your biggest return on your effort investments and how to avoid common pitfalls.

Bio: 

Kevin Schaan is the Global Engagement/Program Manager at Borland Software. Prior to joining Borland in 2005, Kevin was Software Process Improvement Director for TeraQuest for 8 years. Kevin is also a SEI-authorized Lead Appraiser for SW-CMM and CMMI and has performed over 100 maturity model-based assessments (at all maturity levels). He has extensive experience establishing process improvement programs for small and large organizations in numerous countries. His career spans 27 years of professional experience in the software engineering field, including six years as a manager of software systems development projects with core competencies in software process improvement, application management, planning, design, development, and implementation.

Education: M.S. Software Systems Engineering, George Mason University, 1991. B.S. Computer Science, University of North Dakota, 1980.

Notable Conference Presentations and Tutorials:

• Schaan, K. and B. Solon. "ROI for Process Improvement: Some New Thoughts On an Old Problem", SEPG 2002, Phoenix, AZ
• Schaan, K. and K. Johnson. "CMMI - Will the SPI World Change Forever?" European SEPG 2001, Amsterdam (½-day tutorial)
• Schaan, K. and B. Layman. "Measurement Maturity at CMM Level 3", SM/ASM Conference 2000, San Jose, CA

• SEI-authorized Lead Assessor for SW-CMM, Carnegie Mellon University
• SEI-authorized SCAMPI Lead Appraiser for CMMI, Carnegie Mellon University
• SEI-authorized instructor for the Introduction to CMMI course, Carnegie Mellon University