The UML Guy is Martin L. Shoemaker, a requirements analyst, architect, and C# developer (past Microsoft Visual C# MVP) who has taught UML, Analysis and Design Practices, .NET programming, Process Improvement, and more to clients such as Microsoft, Siemens, and the University of Michigan. Now he’s ready to help your team, with a tailored combination of consulting, mentoring, and classroom training to help your developers meet their current challenges and add new skills to manage the challenges to come.

Through TheUMLGuy.com, Martin offers Requirements Analysis training to help your developers become better analysts, including:

• The critical role of requirements analysis in project success.
• Getting the right people together.
• Asking the right questions.
• Understanding the answers.
• Validating the answers.
• Testing the answers.
• Managing and tracking the requirements effort.
• Managing scope creep.

But this is not just an academic course. In this three day course, you'll work through team exercises that will give you hands-on practice in better requirements analysis. (Also available: a five day on site version, with the last two days spent applying the practices to your problem domain.)

To discuss your requirements training needs, contact The UML Guy.

Or maybe you want The UML Guy to spearhead your requirements analysis...

Some software projects use .NET, while others use J2EE. Some projects use C++, some C#, some VB.NET, and some Java. Some projects use UML and modeling, but many don’t. Some projects use large orchestrated processes like the Unified Process, but some use agile processes like Extreme Programming, and some projects use no formal process at all.

But all projects have requirements. No matter the environment or the language or the process, all projects have requirements: goals that the end users need to accomplish and tasks they need to do in order to satisfy those goals. And another thing is true of all projects: failures in requirements analysis cause more bugs, more confusion, and more failed projects than any other factor.

And one of the main causes of requirements analysis failures is simply this: software developers spend a lot of time studying and learning new technologies, but not nearly as much time learning to be better at requirements analysis. Even though requirements analysis is a key skill, the topic isn’t as “hot” as new technologies and tools that are promoted by vendors and conferences and magazines. And many development teams feel swamped just trying to keep up with technologies and tools.

The best answer to this is to include dedicated requirements analysts on your development team; but a lot of companies don't have that position, and don't have budget for it. For better or for worse, programmers are usually the ones who have to solve the requirements problem. If the requirements are rotten, the programmers get the food poisoning. It's better for them and for everyone if they can manage the requirements more effectively.

So this course is aimed at the busy developer – as well as the busy manager and even the busy end user – who wants to get better at requirements analysis, and to get better quickly. That’s a fundamental skill, no matter what technology or tools you’re using. In this course, we'll study requirements patterns: powerful techniques that are simple to adopt, letting you quickly improve the most critical part of your development effort.

-- Martin L. Shoemaker
(The UML Guy)