TEAM Zarate Tarrani Notes From the Field

Objective, Objectivity and QA. Late last week I received a message from the originator of RSI approach to use cases. RSI stands for "Requirements-Service-Interface". I first learned of this technique from Quality Web Systems: Performance, Security, and Usability. I was so impressed with the approach that I wrote in my 22 September 2001 review of the book:

[t]his book contained a real gem: RSI approach to use cases. RSI (Requirements-Service-Interface) is an interesting and highly useful approach to use cases. Some key strengths of using the RSI paradigm is that you will ensure traceability between requirements and the services and interfaces that are implemented. Moreover, this approach partitions services and interfaces, which allows you to manage the complexities when developing a test strategy and associated test cases. To me the chapter on RSI was worth the price of the book.

RSI's originator, Mark Collins-Cope, also wrote most of the chapter that so impressed me. The reason he sent me the e-mail is that he's gathering feedback on RSI, and is particularly interested in how I approached partitioning services and interfaces, and managing the complexities of developing a test strategy and associated test cases (I'm paraphrasing Mark's message). I do not have notes that I can share, but if you've used RSI and have supporting material please contact Mark. He's open to collaborating on a whitepaper.

Mark's company, Ratio Group publishes a valuable newsletter (ObjectView), and has a publicly available technical library that covers object-oriented development, component-based software engineering, UML and related topics. The documents are well written, detailed and of the same quality as chapters from major technical book publishers.

Manisha Saboo sent a Zip archive full of Usability Testing artifacts, which I'm sharing. Manisha's a top software quality professional who always has something interesting to say about quality, software engineering and related topics.

New and Newsworthy. The March issue of TUSC Client Chronicle is available (top item is Kevin Loney's article about online database block size rebuilds in Oracle 9i). Also the newest issue of The Data Administration Newsletter is available, as is the newest issue of Doug Kaye's IT Strategy Letter.

Good afternoon from Tustin, California.