Tech startups typically approach requirements gathering differently from the process that is used to develop requirements in existing businesses and for existing products. Many of these startups operate in "stealth mode", taking care to minimize the number of people with whom they share their innovative ideas. It's common for these startups to create a succession of early releases, and apply user feedback from those releases to evolve the features and functions of their products. This talk describes various approaches used by tech startups to define product requirements, and contrasts those approaches with those used in more traditional requirements engineering activities.

Anthony I. (Tony) Wasserman is a Professor of Software Management Practice at Carnegie Mellon University - Silicon Valley, and the Executive Director of its Center for Open Source Investigation (COSI). In Spring, 2014, he was Shaw Visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore.

Tony is best known as the Founder and CEO of Interactive Development Environments (IDE), which built the innovative Software through Pictures (StP) multiuser modeling environment. IDE was one of the first companies to include open source software in a commercial software product. In 2000, Tony became VP of Bluestone Software, where he led the creation of the award-winning open source Total-e-Mobile toolkit for building mobile web apps. Prior to that, he was a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

Tony is currently a Director of the Open Source Initiative, and a member of the Board of Advisors of Open Source for America. He is a member of the Executive Advisory Board of CollabNet, Inc.

He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a B.A. in mathematics and physics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the ACM. He was the 2012 recipient of the Distinguished Educator Award from the IEEE Technical Council on Software Engineering, and the 2013 recipient of the Influential Educator Award from the ACM Special Interest Committee on Software Engineering (SIGSOFT).

Tony on LinkedIn and his extended Bio.

Properly protecting information is in all our best interests, but it is a complex undertaking. The fact that regulation is often written by non-technologists, introduces additional challenges and obstacles. Moreover, those who design systems that collect, store, and maintain sensitive information have an obligation to design systems holistically within this broader context of regulatory and legal compliance. There are questions that should be asked when developing new requirements for information systems. For example, how do we build systems to handle data that must be kept secure and private when relevant regulations tie your hands? When building a system that maintains health or financial records for a large number of people, what do we need to do to protect the information against theft and abuse, keep the information private, AND at the same time, satisfy all governing privacy/security laws and restrictions? Moreover, how do we know that we've satisfied those laws? How do we monitor for compliance while ensuring that we're monitoring the right things? And, how do you accomplish all this in a way that can be expressed clearly to end-users and legislators (or auditors) so they can be confident you are doing the right things? We've been working on technologies to make these tasks simpler, and in some senses, automatic. In this talk, I will describe some of the research that we have been conducting to address these problems.

Dr. Annie I. Antón is a Professor in and Chair of the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She has served the national defense and intelligence communities in a number of roles since being selected for the IDA/DARPA Defense Science Study Group in 2005-2006. Her current research focuses on the specification of complete, correct behavior of software systems that must comply with federal privacy and security regulations.

She is founder and director of ThePrivacyPlace.org. Antón currently serves on various boards, including an Intel Corporation Advisory Board and the Future of Privacy Forum Advisory Board. She is a former member of the U.S. DHS Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, the CRA Board of Directors, the NSF Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate Advisory Council, the Distinguished External Advisory Board for the TRUST Research Center at U.C. Berkeley, the DARPA ISAT Study Group, the USACM Public Policy Council, the Advisory Board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC, the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Board of Trustees, the Microsoft Research University Relations Faculty Advisory Board, the CRA-W, and the Georgia Tech Advisory Board (GTAB).

Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2012, she was a Professor of Computer Science in the College of Engineering at the North Carolina State University. Antón is a three-time graduate of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, receiving a Ph.D. in 1997 with a minor in Management & Public Policy, an M.S. in 1992, and a B.S. in 1990 with a minor in Technical and Business Communication.

In 2006, she was honored with an award for "Most Influential Paper of ICRE 1996" at RE'06 for her 1996 paper entitled "Goal-Based Requirements Analysis". Her 1994 IEEE Software paper with co-authors Colin Potts and Kenji Takahashi was ranked the #10 most highly cited IEEE Software paper in its 25th Anniversary issue. She is a former associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, former cognitive issues area editor for the Requirements Engineering Journal, and a former member of the International Board of Referees for Computers & Security. From 2008-2012 she served as co-Vice Chair of the ACM U.S. Public Policy Executive Committee. She is a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, a member of Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK) National Leadership Honor Society, a senior member of the IEEE, and an ACM Distinguished Scientist.

Anthony Finkelstein is a graduate in systems engineering holding a BEng, MSC and PhD. He is Professor of Software Systems Engineering at University College London (UCL) and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is also a Member of Academia Europaea and a Fellow of City & Guilds of London Insitute. He serves as Dean of UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences. He was formerly Head of UCL Department of Computer Science. He is a Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at the National Institute for Informatics, Tokyo, Japan.

He has published more than 250 scientific papers and secured more than £30m of research funding. He is a professional Fellow of both the Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET) and the British Computer Society (BCS) and has been active in both, serving on numerous Boards and Committees. In 2009 he received the Oliver Lodge Medal of the IET for achievement in Information Technology. He has been recognised for his contributions to the field of requirements engineering and for his professional service by the IEEE and the ACM. He was a winner of the prestigious International Conference on Software Engineering 'most influential paper' prize recognising the influence of his work over an extended period and has additionally received a ‘special contribution’ award from the International Conference on Software Engineering. He was a member of the winning team of the first Times Higher Education ‘Research Project of the Year’.

He has served on numerous editorial boards including that of ACM TOSEM and IEEE TSE, and was founder editor of Automated Software Engineering. He also chaired and presented keynote talks at numerous international meetings. He was General Chair of the International Conference on Software Engineering. He served on the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise panel for Computer Science and Informatics and currently serves on the 2014 Research Excellence Framework panel. He was a member of the Committee of Visitors for the US National Science Foundation.

He has provided consultancy advice to a very large number of high profile companies and government organisations. He has acted as an expert in complex technology disputes and is highly experienced at technology due diligence on start-up companies working with leading VC and other investors. He was awarded the UCL ‘Entrepreneurial Spirit’ award, an institutional honour marking his contributions to knowledge transfer. He has established three successful ‘spinout’ companies providing respectively professional services, product software and an innovative software service. He serves on the Board of UCL Business, UCL's technology transfer office.

Anthony Finkelstein is committed to engineering education and has organised national and international events for students. He is part of the team that is establishing a University Technical College in East London. He has a widely read blog ‘Serious Engineering’ commenting on issues in engineering, technology and education.