CETISFIS Sept10 Gathering Requirements

Issues

 * Market needs often drive standards development - the business case is stronger than the use case.
 * How can you develop for future (often unforeseen uses) using existing standards?
 * How can you be forward looking?
 * Tension between stability and implementation. Lots of vendors just want to know when a spec/standard is stable enough for them to implement
 * Can be tensions between building infrastructure and services - build a service to fulfil a need infrastructure for efficiency and to create opportunities - not always compatable.
 * Loud voices -v- real needs
 * Time
 * Many cases there needs to be national (and international) consortia need to drive adoption and implementation.

Potential Approaches

 * extending period of requirements period
 * concentrate on developing "real" use cases
 * breaking down barriers for user involvement - then can use for checking/testing fit for purpose (UKOLN have developed some approaches in relation to application profiling work see Paul Walk's blog post).

Priorities

 * Change of mindset re longevity of specs, some can be thrown away after a short time and that's OK.
 * Shorter development cycles - release early and often
 * Become more effective at risk mitigation

Actions
Suggested that maybe some research into the key dependencies between spec development cycle and vendor implementation cycle may provide some insights into helping with the stability/implementation issues.