Why Johnny Still Cannot Write Requirements

In 1990, the Why Johnny Can't Write Requirements paper was published by IEEE and also presented to a Data Processing Management Association Symposium. During that year INCOSE was formed, Hubble Space Telescope was launched, Iraq invaded Kuwait, Alan Davis published a book on writing software requirements, several requirement management tools were marketed and a few classes existed. A lot has happened in 20 years. Our view of the universe has changed because of Hubble, our understanding of how wars will be fought in the future has changed because of what happened in Iraq and Kuwait, and many more people are on the requirements and system engineering band wagon than even knew it existed in 1990. We'll explore how things were 20 years ago with updates for the intervening years, to understand where we have been and what has happened in the world, to INCOSE, to SEs and to requirements processes, practices, use of tools and other changes. We'll share your feedback on where you think today's requirements problems lie, for you and for your organization. We'll look at where you are now by having you take a short quiz on requirements and grade yourself. This will help you understand if you need to learn more of the basics or move on to other topics and give you some ideas to take back to your own organization. We'll explore what still needs to be done now and how you can go about causing more changes to improve requirements processes and practices to help your organization or company, much more efficiently and effectively, develop or acquire the products that are needed for your success and the success of your customers and users.