== Updated: See "Comment" below ==
My e-mail inquiry.
Query re: Michael Jackson's "Problem Frames" - any listserv or similar?
From: William Reilly
To: jblaine@san.rr.com
Greetings, Mr. Blaine,
I came upon your 2002 review of Michael Jackson's "Problem Frames," in Software Quality Professional:
http://www.asq.org/pub/sqp/past/vol4_issue2/resource.html#problemframes
...and thought I might ask if you are familiar with any sort of forum, listserv, wiki, etc., in which people are discussing Problem Frames.
I've recently begun this book,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/020159627X/
Problem Frames
Michael Jackson. Addison Wesley, 2001.
...led to it by recently finishing Ben Kovitz's, which is based in part on Jackson's problem frames work:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1884777597/
Practical Software Requirements: A manual of content and style.
Manning, 1999.
Thank you for your time in considering my request.
Best regards,
William Reilly
william@reilly2001.info
http://reilly2001.info
Somerville, Massachusetts
Hi Dave,
Many thanks for your (prompt) reply. (below)
A couple of weeks back I'd briefly tried the Manning website for "/Kovitz" but as they'd moved the forums I didn't then take the time to follow up, and then forgot about that obvious (?) resource. Thanks for pointing it out.
I've just spent some time there. A couple of attractive links and a quote or two below.
(You'll see I put one in (one of the better ones) that, it turns out, was from you! Quite circular ;^)
==========
Carnegie Mellon, Architectures of Software Systems (1998)
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/tinker-arch/www/html/1998/Lectures/03.ProbFrames/quick_index.html
[Case Study]
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/tinker-arch/www/html/1998/Lectures/05.ProbFrm/quick_index.html
"Requirements Process description" (dblaine)
http://www.manning-sandbox.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2662&tstart=23
"Practical system like example"
http://www.manning-sandbox.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2656&tstart=15
Slashdot write-up, responses...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/10/21/0916240&mode=thread
http://www.manning-sandbox.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2646&tstart=34
"BTW, for a long time now, I've been trying to come up with a
really good *first* question to ask during analysis--a question
that you can ask even before you know anything about the problem
domain. I think I've got it: "What benefit do you want to make
the software responsible for achieving?" That seems to get the
customer focused on the most important effects to be achieved in
the problem domain--informing people of something, making things
happening according to certain rules, providing the results of
certain calculations, etc."
Thanks - I may try to write up my own, and submit it (don't know if Ben K. is still responding, but, worth the write-up exercise all the same).
Best,
William Reilly
P.S. It's an online test-taking system, for a not-for-profit (http://www.cast.org), for students with learning disabilities or low vision - onscreen reader would read the question and multiple choice answers, etc. Architecture driving it is based on Apache Cocoon XML/XSLT/Java publishing framework.
Mostly a "Workpieces" frame, I believe.
=================
On Monday 23 February 2004 19:37, J. David Blaine wrote:
> Hello William,
>
> Yes, I'm aware of one forum. There is a web site for Ben Kovitz's book. It
> is listed in the book. I'm not sure whether it is still active.
>
> best,
> --dave