What's new in IREB CPRE 3: Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering

The certification of the International Requirements Engineering Board (IREB) is a success story. Requirements management is an important discipline in systems engineering. Since 2007, more than 76,000 people in 90 countries have taken the CPRE Foundation Level exam. In doing so, we have professionalized requirements engineering and established a common language.

Just over a year ago, the IREB completely revised the syllabus. As I will soon be conducting a CPRE Foundation training course, this is a good opportunity to give my readers an overview of the content and the changes.

I was fortunate enough to witness the creation of the IREB, as I was a consultant for the HOOD Group was. Colin Hood co-founded the board back then and is still active in the IREB's Modeling working group today.

The levels of the CPRE

The CPRE certification consists of three levels and a total of seven modules. The Foundation Level is both the most popular and the most important module. This is because with the Foundation Level, we establish a common language and basic knowledge, which drastically improves communication when dealing with requirements.

The purpose of the Advanced Levels is obvious and covers four possible subject areas in greater depth. The Expert Level, for which there is no syllabus, is interesting. Here, experts can prove their expert status based on their relevant experience.

CPRE Foundation Level

The training for the Foundation Level is designed for three days. The IREB has a detailed syllabus (50 pages), which can be downloaded free of charge from the IREB website. The following image shows that the IREB has completely rethought the plan. The structure has been reduced from eight to seven "Educational Units":

I particularly like EU2: Principles. Principles are timeless and therefore form a solid foundation for the rest of the course.

9 Principles

The nine principles from EU2 are:

• Value orientation: Requirements are a means to an end, not an end in themselves
• Stakeholders: RE is about satisfying the wishes and needs of those involved
• Shared understanding: Successful system development is not possible without a common basis
• Context: Systems cannot be understood in isolation
• Problem - requirement - solution: An inevitably intertwined trio
• Validation: Non-validated requirements are useless
• Further development: Changing requirements are not an isolated case, but the norm
• Innovation: More of the same is not enough
• Systematic and disciplined work: Without this, RE is not possible

Schedule

The CPRE syllabus also specifies the length of the individual educational units, with EU3 (Work Products and Documentation Practices) being by far the longest at seven hours. Fortunately, the syllabus is further subdivided at this point to make it as easy as possible for the lecturer to structure this block.

A day structured according to EU3 is extremely intensive for the participants. There is an all-round approach from natural language requirements to models. The cohesion of requirements in specification documents is covered, as is the evaluation of quality, including auxiliary constructs such as Stencils or Glossaries.

The next units build on EU3. In EU4, we learn how to collect the requirements, including the important topic of Conflict resolution. And finally, EU5 deals with the tiresome but important topic of processes.

Up to this point, it was primarily about requirements engineering. EU6 deals with requirements management, i.e. the life cycle of requirements. Only here does the topic of traceability come up. I think that's a shame, because in my opinion this is one of the most important and useful aspects of working with requirements.

Tools have the potential to clearly convey the merit of many concepts to participants.

I also think it's a shame that the curriculum only allows 30 minutes in EU7 for the topic of tools. I can understand that, of course: After all, tools have a habit of distracting from the actual topic. But at the same time, many concepts in the syllabus only unfold their potential when used with tools, such as traceability or versioning. I am convinced that the skillful use of a tool can clearly convey to participants the added value of the concepts in practice.

Conclusion: A successful revision

I like the new syllabus of the IREB CPRE Foundation training. Not everyone is interested in certification. But I can recommend it to every reader, the 50-page curriculum to leaf through it. It is an excellent read and helps even experienced people to recognize gaps in their own knowledge.

Photo by Felipe Gregate on Unsplash