Caliber RM Tip: Dealing with Those Pesky Locked Requirements

If you've used Caliber in a location where your connection is a bit sketchy, you've probably been frustrated by some of the behavior that occurs when your connection is dropped. One of the most insidious problems with having your connection drop and reconnect is the dreaded "Locked Requirement". If you are in the middle of editing a requirement, Caliber RM locks the requirement from use by any other user. This is normally a good thing, since it prevents other users on the same project from wiping out your changes. However, when your connection drops, Caliber doesn't release the lock. The outcome of this is that upon reconnection, the requirement will still be locked under the original session, meaning that you won't be able to do anything with the locked requirement. Typically when this happens, Caliber displays the following message: "The object requested is currently locked by (Username)." When I first saw this, my first response was, "But I am (Username)! Why don't you unlock it?!" Well, the error message isn't technically giving you enough information to diagnose the problem. What it should say is "The object requested is currently locked by (Username) Session (Session ID)." You'll see why below.

To unlock the requirement, open Caliber Administrator. If you don't have access to Administrator for your project, have someone below perform the following steps in Administrator:

1. Click on the "Monitor" Icon. This is an Icon that looks lilke a little gear in the menu bar. This shows you all the active connections.
   
2. If you're unable to edit a requirement that has been locked, you'll probably notice that there are multiple active connections for your username.
3. Start by killing the oldest session associated with your username first. Look at the "Session ID" column all the way to the right. Right-click on the row which has the lowest-numbered session ID with your username (be sure not to kill your Caliber Administrator Session!)
   
4. Click "Logout". This should kill the session under which the requirement was locked. Go back to Caliber RM and see if you are able to edit the requirement which was locked.
5. If you are still unable to edit the requirement, have everyone who is working in Caliber save their work and Logout. Go back to Administrator and kill all the Caliber RM sessions.

After performing the above steps, everything should be copasetic. You should now have the ability to edit the previously locked requirement.

REET'09 Workshop - Call for Papers

Hey everyone, I'm co-chairing the REET09 workshop again this year. It's held in conjunction with IEEE's Requirements Engineering 09 conference in Atlanta this year. I'd like to encourage all of you to submit papers or training activities related to educating people on requirements! If you don't feel like you have enough to do a paper, you could even just submit a fun activity you've done to teach people about them. Here is the formal call for papers:

The 4th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Education and Training (REET09)
Held in conjunction with the 17th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE09). The workshop will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA on August 31, 2009.
http://users.cscs.wmin.ac.uk/REET09/

PAPERS DUE ON MONDAY 29 JUNE

This workshop will address issues related to RE education, both as part of a formal university degree and as ongoing skills training within the workplace. The workshop is intended to go much deeper than a surface discussion of curriculum issues and will examine specific ideas and techniques for teaching skills needed by an effective requirements engineer.

Papers are solicited in any of the following areas or in any other area related to Requirements Engineering education or training:
* Curriculum design for undergraduate and graduate courses. Incorporation of RE topics into more general SE and CS courses. Curriculum for industrial training programs.
* Techniques for teaching specific RE related skills such as stakeholder identification, requirements elicitation, negotiation and consensus building, requirements writing, and other critical RE skills. Specific examples of educational tools, exercises, and assignments.
* Reports on surveys and other studies conducted into the effectiveness of various teaching methods. Assessment methods and practices of RE knowledge and skills. Strategies for assessing of learning soft skills. Methods of objectively measuring assessments.

Papers will be accepted in either of the following formats:
* Position papers (3-5 pages) - Short papers stating the position of the author(s) on any of the topics within the scope of the workshop. For example, positions papers could describe experiences with a particular method for teaching an RE related skill, or could describe an innovative approach to incorporating RE education into the degree curriculum. Position papers will be evaluated based on their potential for generating discussion, and on the originality of the positions expressed.
* Full papers (8-10 pages) - Full papers describing requirements engineering educational techniques, survey results, or experiential reports. For example, a full paper might describe a specific technique for teaching an RE skill and include a case study describing its implementation and evaluation of its effectiveness as well as lessons learnt. As another example, a full paper might describe a mature tool for supporting RE training.
* Pedagogical activity papers (2-4 pages + supporting documentation) - Pedagogical papers will describe a teaching activity and provide all of the materials needed to reproduce that activity in the classroom. Authors of full and position papers, plus anyone else interested in attending the workshop are encouraged to also submit a pedagogical activity. Teaching activities will be documented using a predefined format, and will focus on one or more RE skill, define target audience and learning goals, provide step-by-step guidelines for conducting the activity, include student hand-outs or associated slides, describe the context of the activity, and briefly comment on its prior use in the classroom.

Submissions will be reviewed by at least two members of the program committee for relevance to the workshop topics of interest. Accepted submissions will be archived in a workshop proceeding in IEEE Xplore. Papers must be formatted to conformto the IEEE Computer Society proceeding guidelines and submitted electronically in Adobe PDF to the EasyChair service:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=reet09

Workshop format:
The format of REET09 will be an interactive one focusing on practical ideas and approaches for teaching RE skills and for constructing effective RE curricular. Paper presentations will be used to foster discussion. Demonstrations of specific teaching techniques and materials will be encouraged. The workshop will conclude with break-out groups working on specific topics such as the initiative for sharing RE resources or discussing RE curriculum and developing appropriate templates.
We encourage the following to submit papers and/or to participate in the workshop:
* Educators currently teaching or planning on teaching RE courses
* Academics intending to integrate RE content into existing more generalized courses
* Practitioners interested in developing or improving RE training in the workplace

Important Dates for you to remember:
* June 29, 2009 - Paper Submission
* July 20, 2009 - Author notification
* August 3, 2009 - Camera ready
* August 31, 2009 REET09 Workshop

Workshop co-chairs:
Joy Beatty joy.beatty@seilevel.com
Ljerka Beus-Dukic l.beus-dukic@wmin.ac.uk

Program Committee:
Ban Al-Ani University of California, Irvine, USA
Ian Alexander Scenario Plus Ltd., UK
Dan Berry University of Waterloo, Canada
Al Davis University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, USA
Don Gause Binghamton University of the State University of New York, USA
Vincenzo Gervasi Dipartimento di Informatica, Universita di Pisa, Italy
Martin Glinz University of Zurich, Switzerland
Olly Gotel Pace University, NYC, USA
Ellen Gottesdiener EBG Consulting, Inc, USA
William Heaven Imperial College, London, USA
Ivy Hooks Compliance Automation, Inc., USA
Soren Lauesen University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Emmanuel Letier University College London, UK
Lemai Nguyen Deakin University, Australia
David Randall Requirementeering, Australia
Lucia Rapanotti The Open University, UK