Dear Colleague:
Brass Bullet Ltd. has partnered with the Advanced Software Engineering Research Group at Penn State University, Great Valley Graduate Center in conducting research on a broad range of issues involving best practices in Software Requirements Specification. While your participation is entirely voluntary a high rate of response from qualified individuals is needed to insure the accuracy of the results. Therefore your participation in this survey is respectfully requested. It will only take you approximately 7 minutes to complete the survey.

If you would like to receive updates and survey results, please include your contact information at the end of the survey. In any case, your individual responses will be as confidential as the Internet allows.

Thank you in advance for your participation. Please direct any questions you have to:

Dr. Phillip A. Laplante
Dr. Jon D. Holt
Dr. Colin J. Neill

Please answer the following questions based on one project that you are currently involved with, or one project that you have taken part in during the past 5 years.


Please respond to these questions with a click in the appropriate boxes or by typing in the blank spaces.

If you are unable to answer any particular question, please leave it blank.

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A. Organization Characteristics




1. What type of business or organization are/were you employed by during this project?
   Information Technology
   Telecommunications
   Aerospace/High -Technology
   Pharma/ Biotech/ Medical
   Banking/Finance/Insurance
   Government
   Consultancy
   Manufacturing and Process Technologies
   Education
   Other, (please specify):
   
   
   
2. Approximately how many software professionals are/were employed by your organization?
   Less than 10 full time staff or equivalent
   10 to 20 full time staff
   21 to 49 full time staff
   50 to 99 full time staff
   100 to 300 full time staff
   more than 300 full time staff
   Do not know
   
   
3. What is/was the approximate size of your organization's annual budget?
   Less than $5 million
   $5 million to 9 million
   $10 million to 49 million
   $50 million to $150 million
   more than $150 million
   Do not know
   
   

   B. Project Profile

   
   

4. Which of the following application domains does/did this project apply to?
   Telecommunications
   Education
   Government
   Imaging
   Aerospace
   Retail, Distribution & Transport
   Finance/Banking/Insurance
   Medical Systems
   Utilities
   Defence
   Pharmaceuticals
   Other (please specify)
   
   
   
5. Which of the following development life-cycles best describes the one you are using/ did use in the project?
   Waterfall
   Rapid Prototyping
   Evolutionary
   Incremental
   Spiral
   Unified Process
   Other (please specify)
   
   
   
6. Within the life-cycle, do/did you do any prototyping?
   Yes
   No
   If your answer is No, please go to question 8
   
   
7. If your answer is Yes, how do/did you prototype? (Check all that apply)
   4GL environment
   Throw-away prototype
   Evolutionary prototype
   User interface
   Other, (please specify):
   
   
   
8. How many full time staff (IT) are/were involved in the project altogether?
    
   
9. What is/was the duration of the project (from inception to delivery) ?
   less than 6 months
   6 months - < 12 months
   12 months - <24 months
   24 months - <36 months
   36 months - <48 months
   48 months - <60 months
   more than 60 months
   
   
   

   C. Requirements

   
   

10. What techniques do/did you use for requirements elicitation? ( Check all that apply).
    Interviews
    Data Mining
    Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
    Designer as Apprentice
    Informal modeling (text and boxes)
    Semi-formal modeling (DFD, UML)
    Formal modeling (Z, VDM, SDL)
    Scenarios / Use Cases / User stories
    Throw-away prototyping
    Focus Groups
    SSM
    Ethnographic approaches
    Joint Application Development (JAD)
    Other, (please specify):
    
    
11. Which of the following approaches are you using/did you use in analysis and modelling the software requirements? (Check all that apply)
    Structured Analysis and Design Technique(SADT)
    Structured System Analysis and Design Method (SSADM)
    Structured Requirements Definition (SRD)
    Jackson System Development (JSD)
    Object Oriented Analysis
    No Methodology
    Other, (please specify):
    
    
    
12. In what sort of notation is/was the requirements specification expressed?
    Formal (e.g. Z, VDM)
    Semi formal (e.g. DFD, ERD, STD)
    Informal (Natural Language)
    Other (please specify):
    
    
13. Do/did you perform requirements inspections?
    Yes
    No
    If your answer is No, please go to question 15
    
    
14. If your answer is Yes, which technique do/did you use? (Check all that apply)
    Ad hoc walk-through
    Formal walk-through
    Automatic (using software tools)
    Checklist
    Scenario
    Other (please specify):
    
    
15. In your opinion, does your company do enough requirements engineering?
    Yes
    No
    
    

D. Software Quality and Productivity




16. The following statements are indicators for Software Quality and Software Productivity. Please rate these statements by clicking one box with the following scales
     
    

    Software Quality and Productivity	Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neither Disagree nor Agree	Agree	Strongly Agree	Not Applicable
    Capabilities of the finished product fitted well with customer or user needs
    End-users found the finished product was easy to use
    Project costs were within budget estimates
    The duration of the project was within schedule
    Project goals were achieved earlier than predicted
    The team size was adequate for the project
    The ability and previous experience of the software development team was adequate
    The quality of the development team's work was acceptable
    Error severity was not significant in the project
    Corrective hours resolving run-time problems were minimal
    The project could have been completed faster, but that would have meant a lower quality product




E. Personal Experience




17. Which of the following best describes your position while engaged in this project?
    Programmer / Developer
    Analyst
    Software Architect
    Software Engineer
    Consultant
    Project Manager
    Executive
    Other (please specify)
    
    
18. Over the last 5 years, how many software projects have you worked on?

Participation is voluntary and you may withdraw your participation at any time and decline to answer any questions. Your answers to this questionnaire will remain completely confidential (although responses are not encrypted), but if you would like to be informed as to the progress and results of this research, please fill in the following information:

Name:

Job Title:

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Submission of a completed survey constitutes consent to be included in the study. Many thanks.