This article from Jason Moccia of OneSpring examines the issues with traditional textual requirements and how simulation helps solves these issues.

Jason has over ten years of experience in the software development field and is a co-founder and managing partner of OneSpring (www.onespring.net).

This is a technical paper from the SEI Technical Report
CMU/SEI-2008-TR-002

"Process Simulation Modeling (PSIM) technology can be used to evaluate issues related to process strategy, process improvement, technology and tool adoption, project management and control, and process design. Recent developments in PSIM tools have drastically cut the costs to develop models for evaluating such issues, and new methods have been developed to apply PSIM, enabling it to provide greater business value. At the same time, trends within the software industry towards improving operations and reducing costs have heightened the need for tools to better plan and manage processes. As a result, organizations regard PSIM as an attractive tool that can provide business value today.

This report shows examples of how PSIM has been implemented within industry and government organizations to improve process consistency and results. The report also shows, via many examples, exactly how PSIM supports Capability Maturity Model Integration Process Areas from level 2 through level 5."

Top 10 tools for UI designers, information architects and usability specialists. Below is the complete list of tools which help the UI designers in their difficult work.

Link to file

Since specialized simulation (or prototyping) tools are gaining momentum and visibility in th requirements definition arena, all Business Analysts should understand the pros and cons of using such a tool to automate their (rather manual) work.

This article examines the issues with traditional textual requirements and how simulation helps solve these issues.

Highlights from this month include annual general meeting review and letter from president Kathleen Barret, BABOK 2.0 overview, an article on requirements simulation, chapter updates, and more.

Authors:
Michael McCurdy -- NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Christopher Connors -- Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Guy Pyrzak -- San Jose State University Foundation, Moffett Field, CA
Bob Kanefsky -- University of California, Santa Cruz, Moffett Field, CA
Alonso Vera --Carnegie Mellon University, Moffett Field, CA

This article gives us a language to help communicate the type of prototype we need for each particular project. To say low or high fidelity is too binary of an answer as prototypes may be at sliding scale from low to high on each of 5 points.

Visual Fidelity – is it a hand sketch, wire frame, some visuals  or final pixels

Breath – How many section in the systems will be modeled?

Depth – How many pages in each section will be modeled?

Interactivity – Paper-prototypes have no interactivity, html can have low to medium and full coding will have full interactivity

Data – Sometimes Lorem Ipsum will do, but other times real data is needed to simulate the true environment.