The Human Factor in Software Engineering

I am really security-aware because in my life I lost many files and had to write documents a second time. And it is no fun to repeat oneselve´s work. The second time, your are faster, but also work with less love. Anyway, usually I saveguard my work regularly, at least once a week. But before Christmas, I reorganized all my files in a new structure and ... somehow, this seemed to be a good reason for me to do no backup since. Don´t ask me! This makes two and a half weeks without backup. I thought of it Wednesday, on my home office day, but then decided to delay it until the week-end. I went on a trip. Trips are dangerous for laptops...

You guess it: The laptop did not boot when I tried to work in the train on my way back. I had several hours in the train to think about what work would be lost and how much time it would need me to do the same again. Well, 20 hours. Not because I worked only 20 hours since Christmas. But most of my work results I share with others by email, by uploading in my blog or in an e-learning system. Hey, what an advantage of team work! A team serves as a file backup! Nevertheless, 20 hours is much. I wondered how much I would pay to the computer guys to recover it. The laptop´s value is practically zero.

At home, I already have a newer laptop. I went online and searched the net for a hint. Ok... There is a way to boot the laptop again. The fan does not work, but it gave me time to copy the files worth 20 hours of work.

Of course, the backup recovery did not work on first try. You know, you first check whether the folder is on your CD, then delete it on another data carrier and afterwards you find out that the computer does not want to copy the CD. Fortunately, I have a second copy of the CD. The trick worked. I showed the other CD to my computer and the computer suddenly remembered that it can read the fist CD, too. Often, computers are like humans.

Well, I am still struggling with copying data. It will take another hour or so. This is why I have time for writing.

Currently, I am inspecting requirements specifications, UML and ARIS models created by my students. And I ask: Why these inconsistencies?? I have told them several times that requirements must be consistent between documents. We even had a session which was dedicated to creating consistency between these models. At least, I told them to use this session for this purpose.

What happened? In one review, I had to them: "You invested double effort for creating confusion!! This is a mistake also made in practice. Nevertheless, it is a grave fault."

Honestly, I do not understand why people do this at all. It could be so simple: You just sit down and write the use cases or the data model once. Seriously. Then, you can reuse this model for all documents you create.

What good reason do people have for re-creating another data model instead of using the one they created last week? Why do people prefer creating two bad, incomplete, sluggish models instead of one good one? Don´t they trust in their own result from last week? Do they simply forget that there is already a data model? Don´t they believe that life can be simple? Do competing subgroups/ persons within the "team" create competing models because they can not agree on one model or do not talk to each other at all? Do they want to punish the person who made the document template and specification guidelines by filling redundant chapters with rubbish pseudo content?

Bad news for you: Your studies are over. It is not because correcting your assignment took me as long as it took you to copy and paste it together. It is not because you did not treat the topic I have assigned to you but instead the topics that your sources treat. It is not because your definitions do not fit to each other and you do not explain the technical terms you use. It is because it is not good scientific work to copy and paste other people´s text together, even when you steal from Chris Rupp or from a university professor. Yes, they do write a better style than you would. But you could honor their writing skills by citing them. You instead have stolen their intellectual work.

No, making you fail is not unjust. No, it is not OK that other students get good marks for their plagiarism. And it just by error or fear that other professors do not remark plagiarism. Yes, fear. Free lecturers like me and even professors must fear students. Bad course evaluations can cause real damage. And I still do not believe that my bike fell apart without someone helping it. It is possible that one security-relevant screw loosens by itself, but not two of them at the same time.

Yes, I understand that you wish me the same damage that you experience by my "fail" given to you. But me sense of justice tells me that you simply earn the mark you merit. Lots of students have gotten really good marks from me because they did hard work. I do not expect you to do perfect work, but honest work!

I still prefer clumsily worded assignments written in own words, flavoured with queer, individual opinions to a work of plagiarism. A student is still a learner and has the right to write text that is still not perfect. But it must be his / her own work. The result of interested reading and genuine thinking. It must reflect the individual´s discovery of a topic. When you are intested in the topic you study, writing assignments can be fun.

Best wishes for your future. Maybe, you study something that really inspires you?

Incorruptible Dr. habil. Andrea, fighting for law and order in scientific assignments...

Preparing a lecture is like cooking: It takes more time to prepare the dish than to eat it...

Die Folien meines Vortrags "Lernen durch Feedback aus Inspektionen" sind jetzt online. Der zugehörige Artikel erscheint dann im Frühjahr 2014 in den Softwaretechnik-Trends.

Am 28.-29.11.2013 findet das GI-Fachgruppentreffen Requirements Engineering in Ilmenau statt. Ich bin natürlich wieder als Mitorganisatorin und Vortragende dort.

CreaRE 2014: Fourth International Workshop on Creativity in Requirements Engineering

http://www.se.uni-hannover.de/events/creare-2014

*** Workshop topic, background and motivation ***
Requirements Engineering (RE) not only demands a systematic approach for eliciting, documenting, and validating requirements, but it also is a creative activity. It demands that stakeholders create visions of future software systems and to imagine all their implications. Creativity techniques that have been developed and used in other disciplines and areas of problem-solving, have the potential to be adapted and adopted in today’s RE, becoming the foundation for innovative RE processes addressing both problem analysis and solution design.

*** Goals of the workshop ***

The CreaRE series of workshops brings together RE practitioners and researches who are interested in discussing the role of creativity in RE, the array of creativity techniques that can be applied to RE, and the ways in which creativity techniques from other disciplines can be leveraged in RE. Drawing upon the previous workshop editions, the intended purpose of the CREARE’14 workshop is to be a forum for the exchange of emerging ideas, experience and research results. It also aims at raising awareness in the RE community of the importance of creativity and creativity techniques.

The unique goal of the CreaRE 2014 workshop is to foster collaborative brainstorming and exchange of research designs, and possibly results from studies on using game-based techniques for RE. To this end, we plan to create a game for and with the workshop participants, and experiment with it during the REFSQ’14 conference.

*** Important Dates ***
• Jan 5, 2014: paper submission deadline
• Jan 30, 2014: author notification
• Feb 18, 2014: submission of camera-ready papers
• April 7, 2014: workshop date

*** Workshop topics ***
Workshop topics include, but are not restricted to:
• The interplay of requirements and creativity (e.g. between RE and the creative process of game design)
• Theories for creativity that fit RE
• The application of known creativity techniques in RE activities
• Emerging ideas for new/adapted creativity techniques for RE activities
• Tool support for creativity-enhancement
• Context-dependency of creativity and creativity techniques
• Industry experiences with creativity techniques in RE
• Relation of creativity to innovation
• RE techniques that enable or support creativity
• Skill-sets for creativity in RE
• Creativity via reuse: trading off innovation and efficient production
• Thought reading: understanding the other perspective/ person
• Creativity in RE for entertainment applications (e.g. games, online learning systems)


*** paper submission and selection process ***
We invite two types of submissions: position papers and full papers. Both types should treat a topic from the workshop themes.
- Position papers (3-6 pages): Short papers, stating the position of the author(s) on any of the workshop topics. For example, position papers could describe an experiment or a case study in industry. These papers will be evaluated on their potential for generating discussion, on practical relevance and on the originality of the positions stated. Position papers can also be used to describe emerging ideas on how creativity should be performed. These papers will be evaluated based on their relevance, originality and sound argumentation.
- Full papers (8-10 pages): Full papers evaluating an experience (in industry) or describing the results of a research effort. Full papers will be evaluated for innovativeness of the proposed ideas and for technical soundness.

Submissions will be accepted via E-Mail at herrmann@herrmann-ehrlich.de. All paper submissions should be in the LNCS format (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-12-73062-0).
The papers will be published in the REFSQ workshop proceedings.
All submissions will be reviewed by three members of the Program Committee.
Workshop agenda
We plan for a half day workshop that includes a key note, a paper presentation session, a game with the workshop participants, and a closing discussion.

*** Past editions of the workshop ***
8 April 2013 at REFSQ 2013: http://www.se.uni-hannover.de/events/creare-2013
organizers were Maya Daneva, Andrea Herrmann, Anne Hoffmann, Kurt Schneider
19 March 2012 at REFSQ 2012: http://www.se.uni-hannover.de/events/creare-2012
organizers were Maya Daneva, Joerg Doerr, Andrea Herrmann, Kurt Schneider
29 June 2010 at REFSQ 2010: https://sites.google.com/site/creare2010/
organizers were Joerg Doerr, Andrea Herrmann, Klaus Schmid, Kurt Schneider

*** Program Committee ***

Sebastian Adam Fraunhofer Institut IESE, Germany
Dan Berry University of Waterloo, Canada
Hans Hartmann OBJENTIS Software Integration GmbH, Austria
Thomas Herrmann Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany
Eric Knauss Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Anitha PC Siemens Information Systems Ltd., Bangalore, India
Chris Rupp Sophist Group, Germany
Klaus Schmid University of Hildesheim, Germany
Roel Wieringa University of Twente, The Netherlands
Konstantinos Zachos City University London, UK

*** Workshop organizers ***

Andrea Herrmann, Herrmann & Ehrlich, Germany
Maya Daneva, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Joerg Doerr, Fraunhofer IESE, Germany
Anne Hoffmann, Siemens AG, Germany
Kurt Schneider, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany

It is very instructional, and in my opinion even essential to change roles now and then and to walk a mile or two in my customers´ boots. Therefore, I am currently studying historical fiction and songwriting at Coursera. It would be boring for me to attend a course about software engineering, in fact, because there is not much new to learn for me on college level.

But I am highly motivated and already had a lot of fun reading articles about historical novels. In the songwriting course, the professor (Pat Pattison) is telling us stories in order to teach us simple truths about song lyrics. However, the challenge is not to understand these principles, but to apply them artistically. I feel so great, when I manage to answer to the quiz about the learning stuff successfully. I get direct feedback that I understood everything right. Later course units will then demand me to apply what I learned by writing a song. And singing. :-)

Let´s see how far I get. My objective is to end with a great song. I have been keeping my eyes open for a topic. And immediately found one: A pigeon on the rail tracks, pecking a bread roll. When the train was approaching, the pigeon was torn between continuing its breakfast as long as possible, and fleeing from the deadly threat. It carefully observed the train and managed to find the right moment to leave. However: What if not? What if the pigeon every day leaves a second later? Aren´t we in life sometimes also hesitating to leave a good piece of bread even when we know it is dangerous?

In fact, I do not have any time for taking courses. So, I wondered whether I would survive the first week. And I have missed the short deadline of one of the homework. Fortunately, I was not thrown out of the course, only got a penalty on my grading. In constrast to real students, I do not need a good grading. I study just for fun. So, this is OK. Apart from this, I find amazingly many occasions to listen to the 12-minutes video lectures during breakfast or boring work, and it is a nice leasure-time activity to answer quizzes about historical fiction and songwriting. A minute ago, I listened to a lecture while printing out course material for my own lecture. So, maybe I will finish the courses successfully despite all the hectic at work.