Square Corp is a software company that primarily designs and implements software systems for motor vehicles. ElectriCar, a brand new car company, asks Square Corp to implement a system that analyzes data from sensors (e.g. ultrasonics, accelerometers) and provides warnings to the driver when potentially unsafe actions occur (e.g. crossing over the white line). Square Corp assigns Richard and his team to this project. After developing a prototype, Richard's team meets with the stakeholders for a demonstration. The stakeholders are unhappy with many aspects of this prototype, including the delay between sensor readings and system responses and the type/content of warning messages provided to drivers.
Richard's team tweaks their implementation and gives another demonstration to the stakeholders, but they are still not pleased. This process repeats a few times until Richard's team produces a software product that meets the stakeholders' expectations. Upon paying for this work, ElectriCar informs Square Corp that they will be hiring a different software company for their future needs.
Square Corp's lead software engineer, Joanna, meets with Richard's team for a post-mortem assessment of what went wrong in this project, but no immediate causes are apparent. Joanna has heard from a friend at another company, Sid, about a human error informed micro post-mortem process that his team has been using. Sid recommends that Joanna enables MistakeBot on Square Corp's repository for the ElectriCar code. Joanna takes Sid's advice and provides some training on human error before tasking Richard's team with using MistakeBot for a post-mortem inspection of their errors. Richard reviews his team's responses to MistakeBot and sees a clear pattern in responses:
MistakeBot classifies Issue 39 (Unacceptable Delay in Responses to Sensor Readings) as a mistake. Doug confirms, saying that "the stakeholders never provided an expected response time during requirements elicitation and, regretfully, we did not ask them to provide clarification."
MistakeBot classifies Issue 54 (Threshold for Acceleration Warning Too Low) as a slip. After reviewing his notes on human error from their training, Andrew replies "Actually, this is a mistake related to blindly following the requirements specification; the stakeholders provided an unrealistic threshold for warning that the driver is accelerating too quickly, and I implemented it exactly as documented without considering whether the threshold was reasonable. I'm sorry about that."
MistakeBot classifies Issue 67 (User Warnings are Too Specific) as a mistake. Renee confirms, adding that "the content of warning messages was never discussed with the stakeholders during requirement elicitation. That's my fault, I should have noticed that when reviewing the requirements specification."
Richard meets with Joanna and shows her his team's feedback. They conclude that the requirements elicitation for this project went poorly. They share their findings with Richard's team. During the next project, Richard's team continues using MistakeBot, but Richard notices fewer errors compared to the ElectriCar project.
Square Corp is a software company that primarily designs and implements software systems for motor vehicles. ElectriCar, a brand new car company, asks Square Corp to implement a system that analyzes data from sensors (e.g. ultrasonics, accelerometers) and provides warnings to the driver when potentially unsafe actions occur (e.g. crossing over the white line). Square Corp assigns Richard and his team to this project. After developing a prototype, Richard's team meets with the stakeholders for a demonstration. The stakeholders are unhappy with many aspects of this prototype, including the delay between sensor readings and system responses and the type/content of warning messages provided to drivers.
Richard's team tweaks their implementation and gives another demonstration to the stakeholders, but they are still not pleased. This process repeats a few times until Richard's team produces a software product that meets the stakeholders' expectations. Upon paying for this work, ElectriCar informs Square Corp that they will be hiring a different software company for their future needs.
Square Corp's lead software engineer, Joanna, meets with Richard's team for a post-mortem assessment of what went wrong in this project, but no immediate causes are apparent. Joanna has heard from a friend at another company, Sid, about a human error informed micro post-mortem process that his team has been using. Sid recommends that Joanna enables MistakeBot on Square Corp's repository for the ElectriCar code. Joanna takes Sid's advice and provides some training on human error before tasking Richard's team with using MistakeBot for a post-mortem inspection of their errors. Richard reviews his team's responses to MistakeBot and sees a clear pattern in responses:
Richard meets with Joanna and shows her his team's feedback. They conclude that the requirements elicitation for this project went poorly. They share their findings with Richard's team. During the next project, Richard's team continues using MistakeBot, but Richard notices fewer errors compared to the ElectriCar project.