Volere Requirements People

Templates, tools and processes can get you so far. It is only people that can ensure your success. The Volere people are experienced, they are insightful, and they can bring to your project that spark of creativity that makes the difference. Meet the people:

Ian Alexander is a consultant specialising in Requirements Engineering. His work ranges from introductory training courses to requirements analysis and requirements database customisation. He is currently involved in introducing scenarios in the automotive industry, with the DaimlerChrysler research and technology centre in Ulm, Germany; and in the railway industry, with companies in the London Underground.

Ian is a qualified instructor for the Atlantic Systems Guild's Mastering the Requirements Process course, and for Telelogic's Applying DOORS, DXL, and Requirements Methodology courses. He is the author of the JBA Requirements Engineering Course, and helped to write its Systems Engineering Course. His latest book 'Writing Better Requirements' is published by Addison-Wesley, 2002. He created the Scenario Plus for Use Cases toolkit.

Ian is well known as a speaker and writer on requirements matters such as stakeholders, goals, scenarios and use cases. He loves journalism and regularly writes articles and reviews for several journals including REJ, RQ and EJIS.

He helps to run the BCS Requirements Engineering Specialist Group, and is its journalist. He is the head of the Requirements Engineering section of the IEE Professional Network for Systems Engineers. He is a Chartered Engineer. When not otherwise engaged he enjoys birdwatching, collecting natural patterns, watching modern and oriental dance, and playing trains with his daughter.

Debra Aubrey is a practicing systems and software engineer, with the good fortune of working across the United States and in Europe. She divides her time between process consulting and applying Volere techniques to eliciting, writing and maintaining requirements in real projects as a Systems Engineer and Project Manager.

Debra has worked in a wide variety of industries, including scientific analysis instruments, color printers, consumer electronics, semiconductors and avionics. She recently presented a paper titled "The Requirements Dilemma: It's Hard Work" at the 7th Philips Software Conference in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Her paper was voted "Best Paper" by the conference attendees and led to an article titled "Defining Requirements - Recipe for Success" published in Colophon, Philips Semiconductors' Consumer segment magazine.

After meeting Suzanne Robertson during a Mastering the Requirement Process course in London, Debra worked with James Robertson to become a qualified instructor. Debra brings a pragmatic "just do it" approach to the course, with a wealth of experience.

Debra is the founding member of Solvera, LLC, and is currently living in Phoenix, Arizona. She enjoys hiking in the desert with her husband, browsing book stores and training their Jenday conure, Shiloh.

Tim Lister is a Principal of the Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc., based in the New York office. He divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing. He is working on tailoring software development processes using software risk management and customer value techniques. He is a member of the Airlie Software Council, a group of industry consultants, advising the DoD on best practices for software development and acquisition.

Tim Lister and Tom DeMarco are also co-authors of Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, (Dorset House, 1987). This book has been a book club selection of the Library of Computer and Information Sciences, and has been translated into six languages. Tim Lister and Tom DeMarco are also co-editors of Software State-of -the-Art: Selected Papers, a collection of 31 of the best papers on software published in the 1980's (Dorset House, 1990). The two partners have also produced a video entitled Productive Teams, available through Dorset House.

Tim has over 25 years of professional software development experience. Before the formation of the Atlantic Systems Guild, he worked at Yourdon Inc. from 1975 to 1983. At Yourdon he was an Executive Vice President and Fellow, in charge of all instructor/consultants, the technical content of all courses, and the quality of all consultations.

He lives in Manhattan. He holds a A.B. from Brown University, and is a member of the I.E.E.E. and the A.C.M. He also serves as a panelist for the American Arbitration Association, arbitrating disputes involving software and software services, and has served as an expert witness in litigation proceedings involving software problems.

Suzanne Robertson is co-author of Mastering the Requirements Process (Addison-Wesley 1999) a book that provides guidance on finding requirements and writing them so that they can be understood by all the stakeholders. She has more than 30 years experience in systems specification and building. Her courses on requirements, systems analysis, design and problem solving are well known for their innovative workshops and business games.

Suzanne has varied experience as a manager, programmer, analyst, and designer. She has consulted, done research and taught in Europe, Australia, the Far East and the United States. Current work includes research and consulting on stakeholders' rights and responsibilities, the specification and reuse of requirements and techniques for assessing requirements specifications. The product of this research is Volere, a complete requirements process and template for assessing requirements quality, and for specifying business requirements.

In 1983, in partnership with Tom De Marco, Tim Lister, Steve McMenamin, John Palmer and James Robertson, Suzanne founded the Atlantic Systems Guild. The Guild is a New York, London, and (with the addition of Peter Hruschka) Aachen, based think-tank that researches system development techniques. Guild principals have written numerous books and seminars that are among the most successful in software development history. Suzanne and her husband James Robertson are co-authors of Complete Systems Analysis: the Workbook, the Textbook, the Answers (Dorset House, 1994), a text and case study that teaches the craft of systems analysis. Apart from her books, Suzanne is author of many papers on systems engineering. She is a member of IEEE and the Australian Computer and the British Computer Society's Requirements and Reuse Groups. Other interests include a passion for the opera, cooking, skiing and finding out about curious things.

James Robertson has worked on almost every type of information system. His experience has led him to write numerous seminars and papers that are well respected as sources of new software development ideas. As well as teaching his seminars, he now works at advising companies on how to adapt modern software development techniques to fit specific projects, and how to effectively transfer the new technologies to the software developers within the organisation.

His career started in Australia when he was part of a team building one of the first on-line banking systems to use a minicomputer as the host for a terminal network. James moved on to head up the data processing department of Time-Life Australia. Here he added managerial skills to his growing portfolio of projects.

Since then he has formed a solid partnership with his wife Suzanne to consult on numerous large-scale projects in Europe and the United States. Among these was the analysis of a television air-time sales system for one of the independent television companies. This was later adapted to become the case study for their ground-breaking book Complete Systems Analysis: the Workbook, the Textbook, the Answers (Dorset House, 1994).

His extensive work in requirements led to him writing (with his wife and partner Suzanne) the book and the seminar Mastering the Requirements Process.

James studied architecture at the University of New South Wales, and Information Processing at the New South Wales Institute of Technology. When he is not researching and developing software, James can be found skiing or photographing nature in the French Alps.