Interactive Workshops

In the afternoon of 29. March, the Industry Track at REFSQ 2011 will present three Workshops with relevant topics from industry. Experienced practitioners will present problems or challenges encountered in practice, innovations in industrial practice, or success or failure stories. They will be discussed in a workshop format with an audience from industry and research:

Industry Workshop 1: Effectiveness and Efficiency – Evolving towards Lean Development chaired by Steffen Grünwaldt, Siemens, Germany – Tuesday 29th of March 2010, 14.00-15.30

Abstract: Lean Thinking has long been recognized as an important approach to sustainable and comprehensive improvement of products and business processes. In the area of complex systems in particular, the Lean approach is particularly attractive because of its joint improvement of effectiveness and efficiency. Yet, to date no comprehensive framework has been put forth for how to manage the transition to lean thinking in a product development organization engaged in day-to-day business.
This workshop discuss the approach for managing the transition to Lean Product Development, with special focus on aspects such as business objectives to meet and its particularities of lean in product development as well as generating lean awareness and the active participation of employees within the transition phase in order to ensure top-to-bottom buy-in.
Significant opportunities for further work remain, in particular in the areas of further application of the framework, correlation of current and future state scenarios, associated transition strategies with standard case scenarios as well as further development of lean training exercises for methods as applied to product development

CV: Steffen Gruenwaldt is a Program Manger on managing product development processes with Enterprise Processes Consulting at Siemens Corporate Technology in Munich. His inhouse-consulting work is focused on enabling Innovation, Sustainability, and Flexibility by Enterprise Transformation and Lean Product Development.
He is executing the Siemens co-operation with the Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) at the Massachuetts Institute of Technology.
For the last years he has been responsible for several improvement projects for Siemens business units in Industry, Energy as well as Healthcare Sectors. Prior to joining Siemens in January 2004, Steffen Gruenwaldt was working in Strategic Marketing for Corning Inc. and as a Manager at various levels in an operational responsibility at Infineon AG.
Since 2009 he has been a lecturer in Systems Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich focusing on Project Management. He holds a Diploma degree in Physics from Technische Universitaet in Munich (1995).

Industry Workshop 2: Quaility Assurance for Natural-language Specifications chaired by Frank Houdek, Daimler AG, Germany – Tuesday 29th of March 2010, 16.00-17.30


Abstract: Despite many formal or semi-formal specification formats, natural language is still the most popular format in writing specifications. There are numerous reasons for this. One is its suitability for communication among stakeholders with heterogeneous backgrounds and skills. However, ensuring quality properties like clearness, consistency, or completeness is difficult in natural-language specifications. The workshop focuses on (semi-) automatic approaches for quality assurance in natural-language specifications and their practical relevance in the specification process. The workshops starts with practical experiences in this field gained at Daimler passenger car development followed by invited short presentations. In a group session experience from the audience along with candidates for improved (semi-)automatic quality assurance techniques will be compiled
together.

CV: Dr. Frank Houdek graduated in Computer Science at the University of Ulm in 1995 and finished his Ph.D. thesis in 1999. Since 1995 he works at Daimler Research and Development. There, he worked in and headed various research and transfer projects on requirements engineering and management with internal customers in the passenger car and commercial vehicles business units. Since 2004, he heads the research group “Requirements Management” inside the Daimler AG.

He is a member of the GI (German Interest Group on Computer Science) and a IEEE CS member; he is active in the steering board of the GI professional group 2.1.6 Requirements Engineering and we is involved in various program and organizing committees of events related to requirements engineering. Within the distance learning course „Software Engineering for Embedded Systems“ at the TU Kaiserslautern he is responsible for the module „Requirements Engineering“. He is a founding member of IREB (International Requirements Engineering Board) where he is heading the exam working group.

Industry Workshop 3: Software Product Management chaired by Samuel Fricker,  Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden – Tuesday 29th of March 2010, 16.00-17.30

Abstract: The success of any software product depends on the skills and competence of the product manager, especially in agile development. The product manager plays a key role to ensure that the product supports company strategy and satisfies market needs beyond a single development project. This workshop introduces software product management and discusses practicable and pragmatic techniques for planning and controlling the development of software products. The participants will understand the benefits of software product management and how to develop this key role in their company.

CV: Dr. Samuel A. Fricker is assistant professor in the Software Engineering Research Group (SERL) at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) and scientific advisor of Fuchs-Informatik AG, a leading Switzerland-based company in requirements engineering consultancy. His career is devoted to requirements engineering and software product management. He has worked as senior consultant, global process responsible, lecturer, and senior research associate with companies at any scale, from startups to Fortune500. Samuel Fricker is a member and spokesperson of the International Software Product Management Board, which leads standardization in the software product management field.