Suzanne Robertson is a principal and founder of the Atlantic Systems Guild. Suzanne is co-author of Mastering the Requirements Process—second edition, a guide for practitioners on finding requirements and writing them so that all stakeholders can understand them. Suzanne works with organisations to apply innovative techniques and fresh thinking in all of their systems development activities. Her work also includes research and consulting on the management, sociological and technological aspects of requirements. The product of her research and experience is Volere, a requirements process, template and techniques for assessing requirements quality, and for specifying requirements.

Suzanne is author of many papers on systems engineering. She speaks at numerous conferences and universities. She is a member of IEEE and British Computer Society, and on the board of the British Computer Society’s Requirements Engineering Specialist Group. She was the founding editor of the Requirements Column in IEEE Software.

Her most recent publication was in conjunction with her fellow principals of the Atlantic Systems Guild: Tom de Marco, Peter Hruschka, Tim Lister, Steve McMenamin and James Robertson when they published Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior in 2008. The book recognises and defines patterns of the way people behave during projects.

Suzanne’s other interests include a passion for the opera, cooking, skiing and finding out about curious things.

   James Robertson is a consultant, lecturer, author, project leader whose area of concern is the requirements for software, and the contribution that good requirements, and innovation, make to successful projects. James is co-author of Mastering the Requirements Process—second edition , a book that sets out his ideas on the requirements process. This book introduced the systems world to the Volere Requirements Specification Template and the Volere Process; an estimated 30,000 users worldwide have since downloaded the template (available on this site). The book has achieved market success due in large to its clarity and innovative explanations of the requirements process.

James’ career is broad, both in a geographical sense and the areas and systems that he has worked with. It is fair to say that James has worked on almost every type of commercial IT project. From a start as a programmer in a software development house in Sydney, to consulting in New York and London, he has earned his experience at the sharp end of both project and research work.

In 1983, James, along with Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister, Steve McMenamin and John Palmer and Suzanne Robertson (with the later addition of Peter Hruschka) founded the Atlantic Systems Guild. This organisation has achieved a level of respect within the IT industry far beyond its size, having published over 20 books, numerous seminars and papers. Pooling their experience with many diverse projects the guild members have published Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behaviour, which won the Jolt Productivity Award for best general book.

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

  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 Department of Defence on best practices for software development and acquisition.

Tim is the co-author with Tom DeMarco of Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. This book has been a book club selection of the Library of Computer and Information Sciences, and has been translated into six languages.

Tim has more than a quarter of a century of professional software development experience. Before the formation of the Atlantic Systems Guild, he worked at Yourdon Inc. where 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.

Tim lives in Manhattan. He holds an 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 panellist 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.

   James Archer has worked in many different application areas, but his most extensive experience is in the domain of local government. During this time, James has used the Volere approach in a variety of business led projects. James has always managed to come up with innovative solutions to the business problems, ones that have proved to be cheaper to implement and provide greater customer satisfaction in the long-term.

Organisations tendering to James’ councils have praised the requirements specifications he produced for purchasing software packages as being the clearest they have ever seen. He has adapted Volere to use for determining future business policies, building in-house IT systems, and modifying packages to fit in with the business requirements.

James has always taken the approach of trying to discover the essence of the business problem before leaping into technical solutions. This approach was crucial when he lead a project to define, design, build and implement an Integrated children's system. Anne Marie Carrie, executive director of family and children's services at Kensington and Chelsea attributes part of the borough’s outstanding children’s service to the fact "the IT system was not bought off the shelf, but designed by social workers for social workers."

James organises events for the UK chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA) in London which is playing in a key role in developing the professionalism and recognition of the importance of business analysis. James’ events have become hugely popular attracting world leading thinkers and attendees from many major organisations. He also speaks on various aspects of Business Analysis to organisations across the UK including running popular workshops at the Government IT Profession Conference. He is a co-founder of the Business Change Special Interest Group of the BCS.

   Andrew Kendall is a senior business analyst with over 10 years experience of working with Volere in the financial services sector. Having worked both in Australia and Europe, his clients include Insurance Australia Group, Marsh & McLennan, Lloyds of London, Barclays and Lloyds TSB. He brings a pragmatic, results-focussed outcome to project work. Andrew was praised by project partners at IBM for being able to take a limited brief and turn out high quality results.

Andrew’s project experience using Volere has been on a variety of applications including producing specifications for a Pan European Client portal, and developing concepts used in financial crime and fraud management tools. Andrew has also worked extensively on eBusiness applications within the sector and brings with him a wealth of knowledge ranging from large Internet banking and insurance programmes to smaller localised projects. Andrew has shown a keen interest in the people side of requirements management. He wrote his first article entitled ‘The (Proto) type of thinking at IAG’ for Volere.co.uk in 2004, which discussed the project mindset and the use of prototyping in requirements and design.

Andrew holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Technology, Sydney, (UTS) with a major in strategic information technology. He also holds a Diploma in Marketing Management. He is a member of the UTS Alumni and a member of the Australian Institute of Management. 

Andrew’s use of structured techniques started at an early age. At age 15, Andrew was hired as a master builder by the Lego toy company to work alongside their model builders. Not surprisingly, modular requirements and requirements re-use are part of Andrew’s modus operandi. 

Andrew has now returned to his native Australia where he runs the ThinkAnalyse company. When not working on Volere, Andrew is Chairman of Radio Lollipop, an interactive play programme at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.