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  • How to Teach Systems Engineering Awareness: Interview with Paul Schreinemakers

    Paul Schreinemakers has over 25 years experience in product development in various domains. Paul started his career as a mechanical engineer with SRON, the Netherlands Institute for Space Research. During his 10 years at SRON he learned to apply Systems Engineering. Than Paul moved to Thales, being in the frontier of implementing CMMI in a […]

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  • European ReqIF Workshop & INCOSE Interview

    This is just a quick announcement for an upcoming event. We’d like to let you know that a face-to-face ReqIF workshop (English) will take place on April 28, 2017. You have the chance to get all your ReqIF questions answered and to dive deep into the subject matter. The training takes place at Düsseldorf International […]

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  • ReqIF.academy: A Library for ReqIF and Requirements Exchange

    Some readers of this blog may already have discovered a new website that we silently launched: In September, we made ReqIF.academy available to the public. Face-to-Face ReqIF Training for German Speakers For German speaking readers, we are organizing a one-day ReqIF training on October 28 in Nuremberg, Germany. This takes place the day after TdSE, […]

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  • UML Requirements Modeling – an Introduction

    UML Requirements Modeling – an Introduction

    For decades, requirements have been written primarily using natural language. There are many good reasons for this, as we already explained in this series. Modeling requirements has been used in the past as well, but not in a standardized manner. Modeling in the Old Days Before systems modeling was standardized, people still used models. Models […]

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  • How to Model Textual Requirements

    After laying the foundation for requirements modeling during the last three articles, we will finally look at actual requirements, and how to model them. In particular, this article discusses textual requirements. At a later point, we’ll look at non-textual requirements (e.g. use case modeling). Templates: Requirements Modeling for Beginners A surprisingly simply method for modeling […]

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  • How to Model a Specification

    In the last two articles of this series, we learned what requirements modeling is in the first place, and why it is a good idea (if done right). We also learned that there is nothing magical about modeling, on the contrary: You may already do requirements modeling without even knowing that you do it. Modeling […]

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  • What is a Requirements Model?

    This is the second part of the mini-series “requirements modeling”. In this article, we create a common understanding on what modeling is in general, and a requirements model in particular. Models in General Models are used everywhere in life, not just for systems and requirements. It is generally considered a “small copy of something that […]

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  • Why Modeling Requirements is Better than the Alternative

    Requirements are usually captured in natural language. This is fine for small project and no special training is needed to read the requirements. But there are advantages to modeling requirements. Before we discuss why modeling requirements is a good idea, we need to figure out and understand a number of things. Therefore, this is the […]

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  • Will UML Modeling with Papyrus be a success in 2016 and beyond?

    Papyrus is an open source modeling tool that is part of the Eclipse Ecosystem. Those working with Eclipse or those looking for a platform solution may want to have a close look at it. [pullquote2 style=”right” quote=”dark”]Papyrus is an amazing project. If anything, my comment pinpoints the high expectations we have for open source these days. […]

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  • Why Paper Still Matters in the World of Models

    Modeling has been a hot topic for many years, with UML being one of the most popular ones. Models have many advantages: They provide structure, remove redundancies, and allow fancy things to be done with the model, even the generation of tests or code. We also sometimes model without even noticing: Software code represents also […]

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