1 Creativity and the Age-Old Resistance to Change Problem in RE Gil Regev Donald C. Gause Alain Wegman

Shiva Vafadar 2 Intelligent Systems Lab Overall View  RE IEEE conference 2006  Is about RE not specifically Software RE  Affiliation: Ecole Ploy technique Federal de Lausanne State university of New York

Shiva Vafadar 3 Intelligent Systems Lab Introduction  Creativity in RE is about the invention of novel and appropriate requirements  the introduction of change to already proven processes  creativity techniques are not integrated in most RE research and commercial methods.  creativity as the tension between the need for change and the need for stability of an organization

Shiva Vafadar 4 Intelligent Systems Lab Creativity and Resistance to change  A domain consists of symbolic rules and procedures that we can refer to as norms  these norms that the creative person proposes to change.  the creative person needs to convince the experts that he or she is proposing a valuable change to the current norms of the domain  norms both enable and constrain change  Change is expressed through comparison to a given norm or set of norms

Shiva Vafadar 5 Intelligent Systems Lab Creativity in RE  Requirements engineers usually operate in organizational contexts to which they often need to bring a certain amount of chang  Change affects Formal organization: management Informal organization : users and other stockholders People external to the organiztion : clients and suppliers  requirements engineers function as facilitators for helping adopters accept the changes proposed by creative agents.

Shiva Vafadar 6 Intelligent Systems Lab Heuristics for understanding Resistance  to help requirements engineers to introducing new RE processes into their organization’s design processes Homeostasis Internal Worldview Maintenance of identity Management of Resources

Shiva Vafadar 7 Intelligent Systems Lab Homeostasis  capable of operating effectively within limits  Can tolerate and adjust to changes within an acceptably bounded region  organization maintains a set of norms  attempts to correct for changes threatening to breach the organization’s homeostatic region  very difficult for adopters to differentiate between threats and opportunities  the situation where resisting change

Shiva Vafadar 8 Intelligent Systems Lab Homeostasis Recommendation  Identify which norms a proposed change is likely to disturb  Identify the mechanisms that act against change to these norms  reflect on the usefulness of the proposed change and its consequences in the long term

Shiva Vafadar 9 Intelligent Systems Lab Internal worldview  Every organization has a specific set of beliefs that can be said to constitute its worldview  An internal worldview is common to all organizations, scientific disciplines and professions  It is needed for effective action and is most visible in the vocabulary shared by the members of the given community  This vocabulary is a very potent barrier which excludes outsiders who cannot master the vocabulary.

Shiva Vafadar 10 Intelligent Systems Lab Internal worldview Recommendation  learn the norms and worldview of the target organization without losing the creative thrust  meta-questions are useful this form of tacit information  provide surprisingly useful information that would not likely have been obtained without such queries.

Shiva Vafadar 11 Intelligent Systems Lab Maintenance of Identity  it is not easy for an organization to change some of its norms  When a change is proposed that may change a norm linked to the identity of the organization, management is faced with a critical decision to make.

Shiva Vafadar 12 Intelligent Systems Lab Maintenance of Identity Recommendation  Identify the norms maintained by the organization  Identify the norms are viewed as forming its identity by its stakeholders.  Decide whether to break this identity for a given set of stakeholders

Shiva Vafadar 13 Intelligent Systems Lab Management of Resources  The management of resources is a constant endeavor for an organization  Access to scarce resources is very highly regulated  Ample resources just like successful situations may not encourage creativity

Shiva Vafadar 14 Intelligent Systems Lab Management of Resources Recommendation  Try playing with ideas of changing ample to scarce resources and vice versa.  Imagine what the consequences would be,  what the world would look like  what stakeholders would be affected.

Shiva Vafadar 15 Intelligent Systems Lab Heuristics for promoting change  The greater the novility of the idea, the greater the risk (and probability of ridicule)  Management can believe they are assuming as much risk in rejecting the idea as accepting it  formally submit a request for permission to release the idea to the company’s most feared competitor.

Shiva Vafadar 16 Intelligent Systems Lab Conclusions  This paper is a vision paper only  There are many more heuristics  This paper is used to deeper exploration