Measurement Patterns and Anti-Patterns: a Workshop for COSMIC Practitioners

Workshop chairs:

  • Sylvie Trudel
  • Erdir Ungan

Definition:

When measuring real-life functional requirements, measurers are often faced with non-trivial yet common cases for which COSMIC rules and principles are difficult to apply, such as unclear or implied requirements. Despite guidelines exist to help measurers in specific contexts, there are cases for which there would be value in defining measurement patterns and anti-patterns to kick- start an adequate measurement. The motivation for this workshop is to challenge COSMIC practitioners in reaching a consensus on handling the presented cases. Obtaining consensus among practitioners can take a lot of time if done off-line but would be quite efficient if these practitioners are gathered together in a workshop.

The workshop is planned to take a total of 3,5 hours.

Objectives and outcomes:

  • Measurement patterns: Based on common approaches and solutions suggested by participants, we will define measurement patterns and measurement process best practices.
  • Measurement anti-patterns: There are common mistakes observed during the measurement process in the industry, especially by inexperienced measurers during their learning curve.
  • Improvement suggestions to COSMIC supporting documentation: In some advanced cases, applying COSMIC measurement rules may need further clarifications and guidance.
  • Questions raised during the workshop:  Certain questions that require further discussions may arise during the brainstorming rounds. These will also be noted and presented at the end of the workshop for further studies.
  • Suggestions for measurement process best practices: There may be cases in which the problem does not arise from the misinterpretation of measurement rules during the mapping phase of the measurement process but other phases of the overall measurement process. Suggested solutions to such problems will be presented, as needed, in the form of best practices which define process activities, preliminary conditions, materials, tools etc. to ensure an accurate measurement.

Call for Participation and Pre-registration

The workshop will have two types of audience:

  • Experienced COSMIC measurers are expected to be active workshop participants. They should have sufficient experience with the COSMIC method to be able to identify and discuss common challenges experienced during measurements performed in real industry cases. They are expected to be able to discuss advanced concepts in measurement and suggest possible solutions to measurement challenges.
  • Observers are basically participants who would like to deepen their understanding of the COSMIC method. Although they may participate in any discussion during the workshop, they are not required to participate to the whole activity. They will be able to benefit from the outcomes of the workshop.

You are invited to pre-register to the workshop by sending an e-mail to trudel.s@uqam.ca and ungan.erdir@uqam.ca stating your affiliation, your of experience with COSMIC, any membership to a measurement organization. Please also state if you would like to submit measurement cases to be
discussed during the workshop (non-mandatory). Workshop chairs will contact you and register you to the workshop as an active participant. You will be asked to sign a consent form and you will be supplied with a sample of the selected measurement cases to be discussed in the workshop. You are also invited to submit your own cases in the form of but not limited to:

  • Non-trivial measurement cases / problems
  • Measurement patterns/anti patterns
  • Requests/suggestions for measurement rule clarifications,
  • Measurement process best practices

Cases you submit might be used within the workshop or not depending on the extent of applicability of the case.

You can register to the workshop until the workshop data but if you would like to submit your own cases to be discussed please do it before October 9th 2017.

Active participants are advised to register as early as possible. No pre-registration is needed for observing participants.

Workshop Conduct

The workshop will be conducted using the “World Cafe” methodology (http://www.theworldcafe.com) participants will be briefed about the details of conduct at the beginning of the session.

As an active participant you will be expected to attend the workshop for the whole duration. Answers and/or suggestions for presented cases will be chosen by qualified consensus however, they will be subject to COSMIC Measurement Practice Committee’s approval before being published.