Requirements Management Community of Practice (RMCoP) Blog Post #1: The Beginning

Hello and welcome to the inaugural blog of the Requirements Management Community of Practice (RMCoP). My name is Jack Mohney, Professor of Requirements Management at DAU.  One of my duties is to partner with Ivan Teper, DAU Knowledge Manager, to direct this CoP. He and I have discussed at length our vision, goals, and tasks. Ultimately, we envision this CoP to be DoD’s most up-to-date and easy-to-use source for requirements-related information. Thus, we see this blog as focusing on DoD capabilities analysis and requirements development issues. However, since this is the very first blog, let’s look at some fundamentals so you know what to expect with future postings.  

First, this CoP must be user-friendly to survive. This is where Ivan and I come in. He and I are working the mechanics of the RMCoP to improve how we deliver the requirements message. Our bottom line is to make this site easy to use so you can find the info you need – fast. If we make this site as user-friendly as possible, we presume you’ll be motivated to routinely come back for more. Thus, we need your feedback – especially things you see that we missed – and will ask for your thoughts often. However, user-friendliness alone is not nearly enough to motivate the widespread use of this RMCoP.   

Second, this CoP needs good information to grow. Ivan and I are only the stewards of this site. At the risk of furthering a cliché, the RMCoP’s usefulness to the requirements community ultimately depends upon that community. He and I both realize that current AND relevant content is the RMCoP’s biggest vulnerability. Yet where does all of this content exist? It exists out there – with you. Therefore, you can expect that our future postings will often ask for articles, documents (especially service and component-related), policies, lessons learned, and all sorts of other content.

Third, this CoP needs meaningful dialogue to thrive. We always find it fascinating how much better we do our jobs when we interact with others. Ultimately, our goal is to see this community become an interactive, thriving network of requirements professionals – operating on auto-pilot with occasional DAU tweaking. Again, in future postings, you can expect us to ask the community to weigh in on particular subjects – if nothing else, to promote some spirited debate.

So there you have it – a short introductory requirements post. Our bottom-line goal is to develop this CoP into a mechanism you find useful when both coping with today’s requirements challenges and anticipating tomorrow’s requirements issues. We look forward to hearing from each of you. To visit the RMCoP, click here: https://acc.dau.mil/requirements. To submit content or ask questions, click here: RMCT@dau.mil.