e-Learn GORE & Objectiver at your own pace!

Welcome to the Objectiver Virtual Academy!

1. Training objectives

This course aims at getting you acquainted with Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering and the Objectiver tool. You will learn not only the concepts of goal orientation (goals, requirements, agents, obstacles, ...), but also how to put them into practice for solving a realistic case study.  

The main benefits of this e-learning program are as follows:

• the quality of the contents: contents have been elaborated by an acknowledged expert in goal orientation, who practises goal orientation for more than 15 years and still works in close cooperation with the University of Louvain (methodology) and the Objectiver designers.
• a practical training: you will have the opportunity to understand how powerful goal orientation is by studying a realistic case study and by using the Objectiver tool. At the end of the training programme, you will be really acquainted with goal orientation.
• tutoring: your training will be supervised in a non-intrusive way by a tutor to whom you will be allowed to ask questions and advices
• the pleasure of learning: just sit down in front of your PC and follow the training at your own pace. If you face an unexpected impediment: no problem, no stress, you just suspend your session and resume it later on, when it is quite convenient for you.
• it does not harm just this once, but here quality does come cheap: compare, on the one hand, the price for a full 10-day training programme with travel and accomodation expenses and, on the other hand, the price for this e-learning programme: it's clear-cut!
• our blue planet will thank you for your ecological choice...!

2. Training contents

This section gives an overview on the course contents and explains how the course is structured.   

2.1 Chapters

The course is structured in chapters. The following table provide information on the content of each chapter:

2.2 Modules

Each chapter is decomposed into modules. There are four categories of modules:

• Theory. The modules in this catagory aim at introducing the concepts on which the chapter focuses.
• Case study. The modules in this categoty apply the concepts on the case study developed all along the course
• Tool. The modules in this category focus on the use of Objectiver; important functions and steps are detailed.  Movies show you how to use the tool to model the case study. 
• Quizz. You will have the opportunity to test how well you have assimilated the concepts studied in the chapter.

2.3 Case Study

The case study is about the management of a car park system with automatic barriers and time-stamped tickets. The case study has been selected for the following reasons:

• The system is easy to understand even if we have never experimented it.
• The requirements for this system seem easy to set up, but in fact, the study of the system with goal orientation in mind will reveal things we probably would have overlooked!

The requirements document you will get at the end of the course is  about 125 pages long, describes the requirements and the expectations by grouping them in 46 topics. The model contains 135 properties expressing what is required from the future system and what is expected from its interacting environment.

2.4 Roadmap

You are free to follow the chapters and the modules in any order. However, if you are a novice to goal orientation, a roadmap showing the order we advise is given in each chapter in order to help you approach the modules.  The following figure is an example of roadmap you will find in the course:

2.5 Guided Tour

3. Prerequisites

3.1 About you...

We are expecting from you that

• you understand the kind of problem, Requirements Engineering is addressing;
• you can use some "standard" software tools like a word processing editor, a graphical editor (as in Microsoft Powerpoint for instance), and so on.
• you are very motivated to learn goal orientation. To ensure a good follow-up of learners, the number of simultaneous subscriptions will be limited.

We are NOT expecting from you that

• you are an expert in modelling
• you already know other modelling approaches or techniques for building requirements documents.

3.2 Companion book

3.3 Objectiver

3.4 Copyright, license agreement and obligations

4. Training operations

This section provides operational information on the course.

4.1 Duration and expected effort

We estimate the effort required to attend all modules between 24 and 40 hours work. You will be granted access to the virtual academy platform for 3 months.

4.2 Price

The price per individual subscription is 950 € 750,- € VAT excluded for any subscription before end of June, 2013. Significant discounts for group subscriptions exist. Ask us for details.

4.3 Subscription process

You will be asked to follow the following process to subscribe and activate your training programme:

1. Fill in the application form for this course and apply for the course. In the application form, you will be requested to motivate your application and to specify a start date for your training. If you are not yet registered on this site, you will be requested to register it first. Acceptance of subscriptions is not automatic. Admission may be rejected or delayed.  Your application will be evaluated and our decision communicated within one week (on the average).
2. In case of admission, we will send you an electronic bill.
3. Pay the bill (bank transfer)
4. Once your payment is recorded in our accounting system, we shall activate your account and send you by e-mail the following information about 5 days before the starting date of the training:
• login and password
• enrollment key to the course
• time-limited Objectiver license key
5. Download the tool (if not already done) and install the license
6. Start learning...

Please take the internal constraints of your organisation into account to plan a realistic start date for your training: you will not be granted access to the virtual academy without payment.