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Complete thesis - Murdoch University

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skills, accompanied by ongoing demand for the non-technical skills noted above.More personal studies of RE practitioners may provide some insight into the conflicting resultsof Todd et al (1995)’s work with advertisements. Macauley and Mylopoulos (1995a)undertook a brief study of practitioner REs during 1995. Their purpose was to elicit industryrequirements of formal RE education. As will be confirmed by the discussion of BoKs andmodel curricula later in this chapter, there were no surprises in the list of technical knowledgeexpected of a graduate. This included CASE tools, modelling (process and O-O), interviewing,workshopping, analysis (information, structured, viewpoint), prototyping, requirementstraceability tools, appreciation of configuration management with respect to requirements,formal specification languages, HCI issues as well as the need for knowledge of a range oftechniques and the ‘pros and cons’ of their use.Personal qualities appropriate for an RE include:make himself or herself understood, listen, stay calm and assured under fire,quickly assimilate information, talent for sorting and analysing information, writeclear, well structured documents, make presentations, chair meetings, run a group.Also patience, perseverance, be able to live comfortably in a constant state of ambiguity,both independence and team working skills, negotiation skills, flexibility,open-mindedness, sense of humour; good interpersonal skills, analytical, logicaland open-minded.(Macauley and Mylopoulos, 1995a, p 347)However, asked what additional training would be given to a new graduate, a number ofrespondents expressed doubts as to whether this was a job for a new graduate, who wouldtake 12 to 18 months to be able to be ‘effective in the job’ (Macauley and Mylopoulos,1995a). Nevertheless, training would include interpersonal communication skills, shadowingexperienced analysts and involvement in difficult projects.This perspective suggests one interpretation of the job advertisements findings noted above– new graduates would rely on their technical skills until such time as they were ‘effectivein the job’. This interpretation could, perhaps, be linked to the findings of other studies (egDalton et al (1977)) that new graduates are assigned ‘apprenticeship’ type jobs until a levelof ‘organisational’ learning has been achieved.Another interpretation is based on the work of Litecky et al (2004). They suggest technicalskills are used a ‘filtration’ in the hiring process – screening by an employer is used to eliminatesome of the possible candidates from the pool of potential candidates and to pass others onto the second stage. They argue that the information used in the second stage can reasonablybe expected to consist of information on a different set of skills – the second stage is based33

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