Draft:James Robertson (software engineer)

James Robertson (1944) is an Australian software engineer and author specializing in requirements analysis. He is the lead developer of the Volere requirements method and Volere Requirements Templates. He is a Member of The Atlantic Systems Guild. . He is (with co-authors) winner of the 2009 Jolt Award for best published software development book of the year.

Volere
Volere is the umbrella name given to a collection of resources for discovering and managing software requirements. It includes a requirements discovery process, elicitation techniques, a template for writing specifications, a template for formulating individual requirements, and spreadsheets for managing stakeholders, and other contributors.

As a proposed standard framework for requirements engineering, Volere has been adopted by at least one project at more than sixty companies and government organization worldwide. including the European Space Agency's Flight Dynamics Division, the European Union's CPSwarm project, and other organizations doing critical rquirements engineering. Volere has been proposed as a viable tool for scenario and Use-case analysis. As Richard Mateosian has written, "Given the frequent disconnect between 'what the customer wanted' and 'what the engineers built', most companies would benefit greatly from improving the way they define requirements . . . . The Volere process turns customers’ wishes into a usable specification document."

Volere is included as a requirements engineering resource for use within The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).

Among Volere's cited strengths, is its adaptability for inclusion in custom requirement engineering frameworks such as Sentire, or Hydra. "This requirements process is independent of the actual systems development methodology that can be deployed. Due to its iterative and evolutionary approach Volere could be effectively used with a RAD (Rapid Application Development) methodology which can be similarly iterative."

One component of the framework, the Volere Shell (or "snow card") is used to describe lowest-level requirements, those that cannot be further decomposed into smaller elements. The shell is more widely used than other parts of the framework. as it fits readily into requirements engineering frameworks of all kinds, since all have need of precise description of elemental requirements. Characteristics of the Volere Shell include its unique focus on "fit criteria," which within Volere translates to a statement of how fit to the purpose of a given elemental requirements can be demonstrated empirically when the system is built. As developers of one multi-national project report, "the categorizations of the Volere template require [us] to define fit criteria, a rationale for each requirement and the evaluation of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction if the requirement is implemented or not. All this has proven to be of great practical value."

The Volere fit criteria provide a mechanism for requirements-time metrics, as reported by Maiden and in Paul Crowther's chapter of Advances In UML And XML-Based Software Evolution. In addition, the shell "affords traceability, both in where a requirement originates and where it appears in later documentation such as use cases. When used correctly and filled out completely, it encourages the originator of a requirement to study the detail of the requirement, justify the requirement, consider how it relates to other requirements, and how a tester can evaluate or test the requirement."

Published works
Robertson is author or co-author of the following works:
 * Business Analysis Agility: Delivering Value, Not Just Software with co-author Suzanne Robertson, Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (November, 2018)
 * Mastering the Requirements Process with co-author Suzanne Robertson, Addison-Wesley Professional; 4rd edition (2024)
 * Requirements-Led Project Management with co-author Suzanne Robertson, Addison Wesley Professional (August, 2004)
 * Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior with co-authors Tom DeMarco, Peter Hruschka, Steve McMenamin and Suzanne Robertson, Dorset House (March, 2008). Winner of the 2009 Jolt Award.
 * Happy to Work Here: Understanding and Improving the Culture at Work with co-authors Tom DeMarco, Peter Hruschka, Steve McMenamin and Suzanne Robertson. New Atlantic (2021)
 * Complete Systems Analysis: The Workbook, the Textbook, the Answers with co-author Suzanne Robertson, Dorset House; 1st edition (January, 1998)